


Sherlock and the Little Mermaid

by Gem_Gem



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, Bits and pieces of Sherlock BBC series dialogue, Don't Judge Me, Everything gets better when Jim Moriarty is around, F/M, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I make up answers to questions we had about the movie, I'm Sorry, Implied references to Drugs, Jim Being Creepy, Jim being crazy and making no sense, Jim is soooo changeable, John is probably 20 or something, Little Mermaid Elements, Little Mermaid dialogue, M/M, Merlock, Might add elements of The Little Mermaid book by Hans Christian Andersen, Obsessive Jim, Please Don't Hate Me, Possibly songs from The Little Mermaid Broadway Show, Probably going to ignore The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning, Rating May Change, References of The Little Mermaid Disney Channel TV series, References to Drugs, Sherlock Being an Idiot, Sherlock Sings, Sherlock being a teenage idiot, Sherlock is a Brat, Sherlock will change things, Silly, Some chapters have been edited: 09/11/15, Strangers to Lovers, Teenager Sherlock (18), Teenagers, The Little Mermaid was originally about a merman and a human male anyway apparently, Triton is a maniac, give it a chance, this is so fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 22:34:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 44,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4410380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Gem/pseuds/Gem_Gem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Sherlock was in The Little Mermaid?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fathoms Below

**Author's Note:**

> ...Don't look at me like that.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> = Gif by: [wasitelves from DA](http://wasitelves.deviantart.com/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited: 9th November 2015

“Ariel,” Sherlock whispered, glancing over his shoulder as he pulled himself a little further against the wall of the palace, slipping up and through to Ariel’s room warily. “Ariel!”

Ariel was sitting in front of a mirror with her back to Sherlock, her red hair flowing and rippling as she brushed it out with slow, meticulous but uninterested movements. It was obvious that her mind was elsewhere, that she longed to be out doing something daring and exciting, and so Sherlock pondered why she was still in the palace, finding it a little unusual for someone like Ariel to still be coped up given the time of day. 

He quickly scanned the space around him briefly. He vaguely remembered something about a celebration; something commemorating the reign of Triton, or perhaps it was a ceremony for his day of birth? It was something tiresome, at any rate. Sherlock’s mother, father and older brother had been discussing it for longer than Sherlock had liked, and had been planning where they were to view it from within the palace, gushing over what an honour it was to be allowed to look within. Apparently they had to show up, as the whole kingdom was attending. Sherlock’s mother had said it would be a day to remember, and something to express how much they appreciated the trident-wielding ruler. 

Sherlock scoffed inwardly to himself and pushed all thought of the irksome celebration from his mind, and instead shifted aside to catch Ariel’s attention in the mirror. He watched the soft frown of surprise wrinkle over her features as she caught sight of his reflection, and with a mischievous tilt of his head, drifted closer once Ariel looked around to suddenly smile. 

Ariel stopped what she was doing instantly and swam over, “Sherlock? What are you doing here?” she asked in wonder and enthusiasm.

“I found another one,” Sherlock grinned, reaching for her hand and bending his dark purple tail very slightly with his own spirited eagerness, his eyes feeling as if they positively sparkled in his mischief as he peered at her from under his black, flowing, fringe. “You need to see it.”

Ariel’s face brightened immediately at his words and she clutched his hand without hesitation, allowing him to pull her out. His tail purposely knocked a large shell shut that he flitted his gaze over as he towed her away, and he turned to look at Ariel to see if she had noticed, but Ariel was too busy grabbing for a brown bag at the last minute and throwing her comb behind her with a smirk. It drifted to the floor slowly in a puff of bubbles and Sherlock led her through the window with a twitch of his mouth, keeping her somewhat behind his back as he scanned the rest of the palace. He had planned his route to Ariel; he just hoped it would be just as easy on his planned route out. Ariel wasn’t overly loud or stupid enough to gather attention, but she was still the princess, and if anyone saw them, they’d both be in trouble.

Sherlock pressed a finger to his lips with a wink in her direction and flitted skilfully between the pillars of the palace with her, twisting and gliding out of sight of the guards, just as dexterous and devious as he had been previously. His fingers entwined with hers as they neared the exit, and he gave one last searching glance over his shoulder to make sure no one had spotted them, before he bolted strongly over the gate in one great, single arch, chuckling as he pulled her close and sneaked off into the nearest waving sea plants with her.

“What’s it like?” Ariel asked him as they swam side by side a few yards from the palace. “Did you get a close look? Is it intact? Does it have any—?”

“I didn’t go inside,” Sherlock interrupted, pushing his hair back when it moved into his line of sight, and smiled at her. “But it’s larger than the last one, much larger; and so much more dangerous.”

Ariel rolled her eyes even as her pulse sped up and she beamed at him, “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon, how did you escape your brother?”

“Easily,” Sherlock replied a touch haughtily, sharing a self-assured look with her. Ariel wasn’t put off with the implications of his word or facial expression, and merely arched her eyebrow and smiled wider than ever. Sherlock’s brother had labelled them both rebellious teenagers, had called them both stupid and had said that they only ever disobeyed if there were rules to be challenged. Sherlock disagreed, of course. It wasn’t just that, anyway.

A small distance behind them, a familiar voice drifted up that made Sherlock’s mouth downturn, “Ariel?”

Ariel glanced over her shoulder, pushing back a thick curtain of her hair, and pulled Sherlock to a stop, much to his displeasure, “Hey, Flounder!”

“Where are you going?” Flounder asked as he neared, looking at Sherlock with obvious disapproval. “Oh… hello, Sherlock. I thought you were meant to be forbidden from leaving your—”

“Ariel,” Sherlock said, cutting Flounder off and tugging on her hand to start swimming with her again, impatiently, “The ship.”

“Ship?” Flounder asked. “But Ariel…”

“Yes, isn’t it great? Sherlock’s found another one, and it’s bigger than the last,” Ariel gushed, following Sherlock’s lead, and then reached back to snag Flounder’s fin to pull him along with a wide smile, something which Sherlock noticed with huge annoyance and made a show of puffing hair from his face with a surge of bubbles and rolling his eyes in reaction. “Come on, Flounder. I told you I’d want to go back there sooner or later.”

“But Ariel—”

“You don’t have to come, Flounder,” Sherlock told him with a quirking of his mouth and an arch of one eyebrow. “It’s okay if you’re afraid.”

Flounder scowled and puffed himself up, “I’m not afraid!”

Sherlock and Ariel peeped at each other in amusement, “Let’s go then,” Sherlock drawled.

Although he wasn’t happy about the added guest, Sherlock led them both away from the kingdom at speed, his eyes narrowing and flickering everywhere at once as he dipped and dived and curled around rocks and caves. He hadn’t explored everywhere, of course, but he had tracked a vast circle surrounding the kingdom and he remembered all he had come across with perfect precision. 

The path he took them on was one he had taken, alone, numerous of times, more than he cared to remember, but still he made sure that he followed the markers in his mind map, pressing the index finger of his free hand to his temple to better concentrate when the inane chatter of Ariel and Flounder threatened to drive him mad. He floated them through a garden of seaweed to distract them, and Ariel giggled as they tickled her stomach, letting go of Flounder to reach down and trail her fingers through the flowing and rippling strands. 

“This way, I know a shortcut,” Sherlock said once he saw she had let her fish friend go, and swam harder and faster onward; leading Ariel around and under a pod of Humpback whales, and then through a whirling twister of silver fish, hoping to lose Flounder and impress Ariel at the same time. 

He slowed faintly as the waters darkened and shared an excited glance with Ariel, dipping and swirling with her around a jagged rock face covered in algae and shells to swim through the skeleton bowels of a decrepit boat, that acted as the entrance to a ship graveyard. 

Sherlock browsed the scene with enchantment and intrigue, still taken by the sight, his eyes darting from one sunken ship to the other as he finally let go of Ariel’s hand. Sherlock adored the graveyard more than he’d let on to Ariel; he liked it with a morbid curiosity and macabre pleasure. It was the closest that Sherlock could get to the human world, to human things. In the graveyard he could touch what a human had touched, had created, had built, and worked upon. Sometimes Sherlock could swear that he saw and understand what had happened on some of the ships, could see the scratches of fingernails as a human had obviously fought to escape the sinking boat he had been trapped inside. 

Everything told a story, everything was a clue, a piece of a puzzle that Sherlock continually, and perhaps stupidly, tried to slot together. All that he found and understood meant little in the great scheme of things. Sherlock could not tell anyone of what he’d found out; it meant nothing to so many. However, it never stopped Sherlock from solving questions and manifesting theories.

Sherlock spun on the spot elegantly and then grinned at Ariel, pointing ahead, “It’s through there; do you see it?”

Ariel turned, squinted and then gasped with delight, bolting off toward it with Flounder, who had been able to keep up with them, wheezing and struggling to keep up behind her. Sherlock gave him a shove forward as he went by, feeling a little sorry for the fish for a split second.

“Ariel, wait for me…” Flounder panted.

Sherlock watched them for a few seconds and then languidly followed, swimming backward as he ducked under a plank of wood. He fingered the carvings of initials in it momentarily, swiping the tips of his nails into the uneven grooves, and then surged up to pop next to Ariel from where she gaped at the ship in the distance with a broad, mesmerised smile.

“There it is. Isn’t it fantastic?” She said to Flounder, glancing briefly at Sherlock with a happy expression that he mirrored until she turned away.

“Yeah…sure…it – it’s great. Now let’s get outta here,” Flounder replied, turning around to swim away in nothing but a bid for attention.

Ariel sighed and frowned, turning to grab Flounder by the tail, “You’re not getting cold fins now, are you?” she asked, pushing off toward the ship with Sherlock directly at her side.

Flounder squirmed from her grip but trailed after them once he was freed, “Who, me? No way. It’s just, it, er…it looks – damp in there. Yeah. And I think I may be coming down with something. Yeah, I got this cough,” he said, coughing unconvincingly as they drifted to a stop. Ariel peered through a porthole and then glanced at him with an unimpressed expression as Sherlock touched the side of the ship with curious caresses, tracing the curved wood with a tilt of his head, amazed at the craftsmanship.

“All right. I’m going inside. You can just stay here and – watch for sharks,” Ariel said with a faint smirk as she then turned and slipped inside with Sherlock close behind her, her light green fin almost batting him in his face.

“Okay. Yeah—you go. I’ll stay and—what? Sharks! Ariel!” Flounder exclaimed, swimming into the porthole in a fumble of trepidation and getting stuck as a result. “Ariel…I can’t…I mean—Ariel help!”

As Ariel turned back around with a giggle, Sherlock swam passed her and moved further inside with immense interest, touching the walls and the beams holding everything in place, and then tracing one archway as he drifted along slowly. It was dark and gloomy and the sharp, broken, pieces of wood threw jagged, mysterious shadows on the floor that Sherlock grinned at. A rolled up scroll was crumpled and bent nearby and Sherlock grasped it when it suddenly caught his notice, carefully unravelling it only to frown and squint at the barely illegible markings. It was a regular occurrence whenever he found some sort of writing from the humans but still, with a huff in infuriation, Sherlock chucked it aside and carried on with his examining of the innards of one of the best, well-preserved ships he’d found. 

Sherlock heard Flounder scream in the background and rolled his eyes, wincing when some of the ship suddenly caved in, and turned to find out what had happened, before suddenly changing course and swimming up to a glass bottle with vague interest, licking at the top of it in curiosity and blinking rapidly with an abrupt grimace at the taste. Sherlock knew that whatever had been contained inside the bottle had long since gone, the taste replaced with the tang of the sea, the slimy texture of more algae and the grit of sand, but there had been times when he had been wrong. Occasionally he could not pinpoint the exact time in which the ship had sank, and so the treasures held within it, were at times still trapped perfectly, almost suspended in time. 

Throwing the bottle behind him he turned to leave but paused at something out of the corner of his eyes, and dived for where it was on the floor. It was a weapon of some sort; Sherlock had found a few of them, bent out of shape or snapped in half. Picking up the sword very carefully, Sherlock tugged off some barnacles to find the hilt encrusted with jewels. The blade was rusted and murky, but sharp, and Sherlock turned it until some part of it glinted dully, flashing his face with light and reflecting a blurry version of his eyes back at him, much to his amusement.

As Sherlock admired it with a smile, a shadow moved by a crack in the ship wall at his back, reflecting in the blade, and he turned sharply toward it with a furrowed brow, cautiously moving over to peer out. The stretch of sunken ships was melancholic and murky and silent, only a few shapes of fish flitting in and out of the hulking husks could be seen for yards. He saw a quick suggestion of a sharp dorsal fin in his peripheral vision, slicing around the outside of the ship, and he swallowed thickly with dread. Sherlock remembered his prior run-ins with threatening sea creatures, both on his own and with family, and touched a faint scar on the inside of his elbow.

“Ariel?” He called out in a faint murmur as he backed away, straining his senses as he became more alert. He turned and swam quickly to the hole that Flounder had created via the mini crave in from before, and dipped his head down to peer around. “Ariel?”

His gaze was attracted to the remnants of a human skull briefly, noting the shape of the degraded hat it was wearing with a distant interest, and then to a rippling of light that he was sure that both Ariel and Flounder had followed. Sherlock took toward it and trailed up to a gaping hole in the top that the light was seeping from, inhaling to call her name again before an almighty crash from above made him jerk to a halt in shock and cringe backward, clutching the sword in his hands.

“Shark! We’re gonna die!” Flounder screamed almost instantaneously.

“Ariel!” Sherlock exclaimed dropping the sword in alarm as he burst up and grabbed her wrist just as the shark bit into a barrel that she’d shoved in its way. It crashed into the wall of the ship in an inelegant heap, teeth bared and clenched, and Sherlock stared at it with his heart in his throat for a lingering second, feeling all the hair on his nape raise up. When the shark lurched back into motion, Sherlock dragged Ariel off in a panic, trying and failing to remember the way out in his panicked state and instead swam straight in confusion. Flounder frantically moved out in front him suddenly, and was almost eaten by the shark in the process as it pitched up in front of them from the floorboards unexpectedly.

Sherlock turned sharply to get away, speeding off in the opposite direction, and then lost his grip on Ariel as she curved back for her bag where it was caught on a pointed piece of floorboard, “Ariel, no!”

The shark missed her by a few inches and she rushed upward as it followed her, breaking off large splinters of wood in its wake. Sherlock twisted on the spot and looked around, finding another way out of the ship without the threat in close vicinity, and squeezed through in time to see Ariel and Flounder burst from a porthole. They led the shark in a dizzying circle around the mast before Flounder knocked accidentally, but quite violently, into it face-first and sank down, dazed and spinning.

Sherlock lunged toward him a second after Ariel did, and frantically reached out as Ariel slipped through the ring of an anchor to catch Flounder. Seconds before the Shark closed in, Sherlock gripped Ariel by her waist and yanked her backward with a wild and strong flip of his tail, using the extra drive from Ariel as she shoved away with one arm to propel them further away whilst the shark charged toward them at speed. 

Unable to react, it caught its head inside the ring in its failed attempt to get them, and bounced back and forth slightly, a little concussed and bemused from the impact. With the shark trapped, Sherlock exhaled a cloud of bubbles in relief and let Ariel go as she swam down to pick up her dropped bag.

“You big bully,” Flounder glared, blowing a raspberry until the Shark snapped his jaws, and then jolted off after Ariel as she swam to the surface.

“Flounder, you really are a guppy,” Ariel laughed as she went.

“I am not!”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and followed them, pausing only fleetingly to look at the view of the ship graveyard from a higher vantage point. He admired it with a smile, counting offhandedly the amount of ships that were scattered across rock and seabed, and wondered again if there was more to why they sank in that particular spot more than anywhere else. It couldn’t possibly be down to just weather alone, surely? 

Some sort of blurred dark shape whizzed by between two hulking, decaying ships in the deepest part of the graveyard, and Sherlock’s focus sharpened again as he squinted in suspicion. Perhaps it was another shark? Though Sherlock wasn’t sure if sharks, especially great white sharks, lived and hunted in a group. Did they merely share hunting grounds? 

“Sherlock, come on!” Ariel beckoned above him, waving him up when he glanced at her.

Sherlock nodded, “Right. Yes. I’m coming,” he murmured and made toward her just as she reached the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh...I know, I know--I think I was delirious from lack of sleep or something, but this really seemed like a funny and fun idea.
> 
> If you think I should write more, let me know...though I might write more anyway, because it actually makes me laugh...a lot!
> 
> And before you ask; no, Sherlock and Ariel aren't going to be romantically involved.


	2. The Surface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know not many people read this but I love it so much!
> 
> And I know, I know, I'm a cop out, because I'm using the dialogue used in the animated film, but I don't care! I change some of it and I add little bits here and there, but nothing would be hugely different. Yet. I don't feel like I have to re-write it all at this moment, because the events would go the same just with Sherlock added on.
> 
> Can't wait for the moment he sees the humans! Guess who will be aboard! Go on, guess!
> 
> Edited: 9th November 2015

“Whoa! Mermaid off the port bow! Ariel, how you doin’ kid?” Scuttled shouted when Sherlock broke the surface beside her slowly, frowning when the bird lowered the telescope and saw how close she actually was in surprise. “Whoa, what a swim!”

Ariel smiled and enthusiastically lifted her bag, “Scuttle—look what we found!”

“Yeah—we were in this sunken ship and it was really creepy!” Flounder explained, wriggling his fins.

“Human stuff, huh? Hey, lemme see,” Scuttle said, dropping a small anchor aimlessly and being dragged down with it when it was caught up around his leg, before he scrambled to his feet and bounded over, stomping on Flounder’s head in his haste. 

He rummaged through Ariel’s bag excitedly and Sherlock tilted his head, leaning on the little island the bird seemed to live upon with a sigh. Ariel leaned in beside him and was watching Scuttle with anticipation, her tail writhing in the water, and her eyes locked onto the bag. Sherlock had only met the bird a handful of times since meeting Ariel, and he didn’t think the bird knew anything about humans at all, but he couldn’t be entirely sure himself and so waited for the debatable fresh information impatiently. Sometimes Sherlock thought what the bird said could be a hint to the truth behind an object, but mostly it just sounded too inexplicable, or too good, to be true.

“Look at this! Wow—this is special—this is very, very unusual…” Scuttle murmured as he brought out the fork, rotating it between his feathers carefully.

“What?” Ariel gasped, clasping her hands together. “What is it?”

“It’s a dinglehopper!” He exclaimed, holding it aloft in appreciation.

Sherlock’s brow furrowed deeply and he peered at the fork, “Are you sure that—?”

“Humans use these little babies…” Scuttle continued, cutting Sherlock off and bending the fork until it sprang up into the air and he fumbled to catch it again, “to straighten their hair out. See—just a little twirl here an’ a yank there and—voilà! You got an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over!”

Sherlock crumpled his nose in disbelief but Ariel took the fork back, looking at it with astonishment, “A dinglehopper!”

“It just looks like a miniature version of Triton’s trident,” Sherlock muttered under his breath, unimpressed and sullen. He missed the sword he’d dropped. Would the seagull come up with an incongruous name for that too? Sherlock didn’t fully understand why Ariel believed everything the bird said; birds were notorious for being loud and selfish and liars. Scuttle seemed different, but that only served to make Sherlock more sceptical about his answers. The bird had obviously been shunned by others like him, and was lonely enough to talk to fish instead of eating them.

“What about that one?” Flounder asked, pointing his fin at a dark brown pipe, which took Sherlock’s attention almost instantly.

Scuttle picked it up slowly, “Ah—this I haven’t seen in years. This is wonderful!” he said excitedly, waddled away and then jumping around to move back close, “A banded, bulbous—snarfblat.”

“Oh,” Ariel and Flounder gasped simultaneously as Sherlock rolled his eyes at the name and leaned back. If humans truly had called such a thing that name, Sherlock was going to have to doubt their intelligence, just as he did with everything else, which would be terribly disappointing.

“Now, the snarfblat dates back to prehistorical times, when humans used to sit around, and stare at each other all day,” Scuttle told them, stretching out his head to stare into Ariel’s eyes to highlight his point. “Got very boring. So, they invented the snarfblat to make fine music. Allow me.” Taking a large, deep breath, Scuttle blew into the pipe until his bulging cheeks turned pink and seaweed popped out of the other end, making him hack and splutter. 

Sherlock frowned with sudden infuriation, “No it doesn’t! I have something depicting the humans blowing some sort of cloud from the end of it, not music—”

Ariel’s eyes widened and she grimaced in dawning realisation, “Music?”

“It’s stuffed!” Scuttle coughed as Sherlock tried to grab the pipe from his flailing feathers, pulling himself almost completely from the water to try and nab it.

“Oh, the concert! Oh my gosh, my father’s gonna kill me!” Ariel whinged and pushed the fork back into her bag as Sherlock moved to be beside her, feigning shock when she glanced at him. The expression fell from his face the instant her attention shifted, and he glared, both at the seagull and at being reminded, once again, about the silly celebration.

Flounder pressed his fins to his face in surprise, “The concert was today?”

Still contemplating the pipe in his wings, Scuttle tilted his head, “Maybe you could make a little planter out of it or somethin’…”

Ariel snatched it back to put into her bag and began swimming away from the bird, splashing up water in her haste, “Uh, I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go. Thank you Scuttle!” She smiled, waving at him just before diving under water with Flounder at her side.

Scuttle waved his wing back and called out, just as Sherlock submerged to follow her, “Anytime sweetie, anytime.”

Sherlock trailed behind Ariel in a sulk, swimming so slowly that he briefly lost sight of her. He thought of the objects Ariel had found and of the sword he had left in the ship in his haste to keep the princess from being eaten, and folded his arms tightly, barely registering the sight of two eels peeking out of a small alcove as he went by. 

When he caught up with Ariel she was just about to cross into the kingdom before she was unexpectedly surrounded by mermen guards. They saw Sherlock as he tried to sneak away and seized him by the elbows firmly, escorting both him and Ariel into the palace and in front of a pacing Triton, whom paused at their arrival and turned to signal for someone to come forward. Sherlock looked over in momentary curiosity and then cringed when Mycroft swam forward to take Sherlock by the wrist, pulling him aside and away from Ariel as Triton turned to sit back in his throne. He looked powerful and presentiment, and it only made Sherlock’s distaste for the merman deepen. 

Triton seemed to hold a different opinion to Ariel than he did his other daughters; this was down to Ariel’s adventurous nature, her being the youngest of his brood, and, Sherlock presumed, that she looked the most like her dead mother. Nevertheless, Sherlock was irritated that Triton would single out Ariel, treat her differently, and favourite and fuss over her out of her many sisters. Triton was constantly butting his nose into Ariel’s business, and therefore, into Sherlock’s business too. Ever since Sherlock had befriended his youngest daughter Ariel, Triton had been overly wary and protective, and forever had them followed or forbid either one of them from seeing the other for nonsensical reasons that only made them both angry. 

Being just as rambunctious and carefree and inquisitive as Ariel was, Sherlock got into all sorts of trouble with her, and it had not been the first time that Sherlock and Ariel had been brought before the king. On some level Sherlock could understand a father’s worry to keep his children safe, but he did not understand why he thought Ariel was better off alone in the sea, than in the company of a merman a few years older than her. Surely Sherlock’s presence should be seen as somewhat of a good thing? Neither Ariel nor Sherlock had come to any real harm or danger. If the stubborn, old, oaf of a merman would just allow them free to indulge their curiosity, then there would be no need for them to sneak around. What harm could a few broken and waterlogged human objects be? What harm was there to wonder and dream and collect? The more he forbade it, the more he overruled them, the stronger the impulse to disobey. Forbidden things were always the most intriguing. 

The guards were dismissed, as was Flounder, and Ariel swam slowly, cautiously, forward, her head slightly bowed as she waited for her father to speak. Sherlock peeked through his fringe at his brother but was not awarded with so much as a look in his direction. Sherlock glared but kept his mouth shut, pursing his lips tightly together to hold back the stream of snide remarks. Sherlock was not a child, it was high time that his brother, as well as Triton, realised that fact.

“I just don’t know what we’re going to do with you, young lady,” King Triton said after he’d stared intensely at both Ariel and Sherlock, his gaze so fierce and furious when it landed on Sherlock, that he dropped his eyes meekly to his tail fin, watching it rather than the king. Mycroft was silently judging by his side, one hand coming to rest on Sherlock’s slender shoulder in a light but telling touch that spoke a thousand and one words with nothing more than a flex of fingers.

Ariel tried to act innocent and ignorant in response, “Daddy, I’m sorry, I just forgot, I—”

“As a result of your careless behaviour—” Triton went on before he was interrupted himself by Sebastian who seemingly appeared out of nowhere and gripped Triton’s crown with his pincers angrily.

“Careless and reckless behaviour!” Sebastian repeated, furious and surly.

“—the entire celebration was, er—”

Sebastian interjected the King again, appearing from the curtain of his white beard and swimming over to confront Ariel head-on, “Well, it was ruined! That’s all. Completely destroyed! – This concert was to be the pinnacle of my distinguished career. Now, thanks to you, I am the laughing stock of the entire kingdom!”

Flounder swam suddenly from some distance away, shooting crossly up into Sebastian’s face, opposing and protective of Ariel, “But it wasn’t her fault!” he exclaimed and shied back at noticing Triton’s unimpressed expression when Sebastian floated down out of view. “Ah—well—first, er, this shark chased us—yeah—yeah! And we tried to—but we couldn’t—and— he “grrr!”—and—and we—whoa!—oh, and then we were safe. But then this seagull came, and it was this is this, and that is that, and—”

Triton, who had looked bored and resigned at Flounder’s explanation, suddenly stiffened and straightened, “Seagull? What?” He said sharply as Ariel and Sherlock winced simultaneously. “Oh—you went up to the surface again, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

Ariel awkwardly gestured with a meek gesture of her hands and fingers, “Nothing—happened…”

“We had to go to the surface!” Sherlock suddenly exclaimed with a scowl, and froze instantly when everyone turned to look at him. Triton’s eyes narrowed powerfully just as Mycroft’s hand tightened on Sherlock’s shoulder in warning. “…To get away from the shark. What did you expect us to do? I suppose you would have it that we let ourselves be eaten? – The surface was the safest place at the time. We took a gamble and it paid off, quite spectacularly as well I might add. It was merely coincidence that we happened to pick a spot the seagull obviously occupied. Once that stupid bird started talking it was rather difficult to shut it up—And I find it quite laughable, truly amusing, that you looked so nonplussed at the mention of Ariel almost being violently and savagely hurt by a shark, but the mere mention of her at the surface and—”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft cautioned lowly and pulled him back with a hard shake to lean down and give Sherlock a tight and annoyed look. “Enough.”

“You could’ve been seen by one of those barbarians—by—by one of those humans!” Triton told them both, moving off his throne to gesture with his arms animatedly, looking overly worried and upset when he glanced at Ariel.

Sherlock pulled back his shoulders in disagreement as Ariel frowned and clenched her hands; leaning forward indignantly, “Daddy, they’re not barbarians!”

“They didn’t see us!” Sherlock added just as outraged, ignoring the pull at his shoulder. “Do you think they just parade about the waters at all hours?—” 

“They’re dangerous! Do you think I want to see my youngest daughter snared by some fish-eater’s hook?” Triton asked, reaching forward to gently, tenderly, caress Ariel’s chin, upturning her face as he peered down at her in care. He seemed to be snubbing Sherlock and Sherlock grit his teeth in reaction.

Ariel frowned and pulled her head back from her father’s touch, glaring at him rebelliously, “I’m sixteen years old—I’m not a child anymore—”

“Don’t you take that tone of voice with me young lady. As long as you live under my ocean, you’ll obey my rules!” He boomed in reply, pointing a thick and demanding finger at her as Ariel turned away in frustration and then turned back, reaching out pleadingly with her hands.

“But if you would just listen—”

Triton cut her off with a sweep of his arm, turning his back to her, “Not another word—and I am never, never to hear of you going to the surface again. Both of you!” he bellowed, turning his angry gaze abruptly on Sherlock who couldn’t help but shrink back into Mycroft’s side faintly. “And you shall stay away from my daughter for the remainder of your stay here. This is your final warning. Is that clear?”

“You can’t do that!” Ariel protested as she glanced between Sherlock and Triton, swimming in the middle to confront her father. “He’s my friend! You can’t keep me from seeing him, or him from seeing me!—”

“I can, and I will!” Triton shouted his tone different from the other handful of times he had inhibited them. Before he had done so in a way that wasn’t final, that meant he would forget and calm down, and let Ariel have what she wanted in due course, like he always seemed to do; however it felt nothing like that, it felt utterly different and absolute, Triton’s anger for discovering they had both been to the surface heightening and increasing his resentment toward their friendship.

Sherlock glanced up in objection to Mycroft, looking for him to intervene in some way, but Mycroft looked down his nose at him impassively and said nothing. Sherlock clenched his jaw and glanced over at Ariel who had turned toward him, her bottom lip wavering as she tried to hold back sobs. He returned her gaze and very slightly tipped his head, quirking his eyebrow, relieved when she understood the signal and nodded, swimming off without another word nor a backward glance. Mycroft’s hand tightened further, observably having had seen her nod, and Sherlock tried to shrug him off with a soft snarl, glowering at the seafloor.

Triton sat back into his throne with a deep but barely audible sigh and a bowed head, dismissing Mycroft and Sherlock with a motion of his hand. Mycroft bowed, mumbled “Your majesty,” and dragged Sherlock away by his arm with a cruel and biting grip that Sherlock recalled many times from his youth.

Sherlock fought and flailed with gritted teeth, kicking up his tail in upheaval, and only stopped when Mycroft yanked him forward, glared heatedly at Sherlock for an entire minute, and then wrapped a strong arm around Sherlock’s middle. Sullenly, Sherlock let himself be pulled away, seeing no real way out of it until he got home, and glanced discreetly around for Ariel as he heard Triton speaking to Sebastian at his back. She was nowhere in sight and Sherlock struggled faintly against Mycroft’s hold in hopes of at least seeing her retreating figure; perhaps she had gone to her room first? 

It had been so stupid, the entire scene, and especially the king with his obvious anger problems and what looked to be a split personality disorder. How could he have such a strong response to only one part of their story, and a part that had turned out to be the safest out of the whole tale too? And then, after shouting and ordering Ariel in such a way, he did not think to go after her? Did he honestly expect her to change the mermaid that she was in that single moment? He was perhaps the biggest idiot that Sherlock had had the dissatisfaction of meeting. 

Leaning on and over Mycroft’s forearm to try and see around the pillars of the palace, Sherlock put almost all of his weight on his brother’s arm with an amused twist of his mouth. His brother was older, but his strength had been beginning to wane over the years. Mycroft was plump, filled with whatever it was that snobbish merfolk ate, whilst they discussed whatever it was that snobbish merfolk talked about. 

“Enough,” Mycroft barked, jostling him. “Mummy is extremely angry with you...”

Sherlock sighed and slumped with a roll of his eyes and a grimace, hanging off Mycroft’s arm just to be annoying, and tipped his head back to gaze up at the surface with a pensive, dejected sort of expression.


	3. Humans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited: 9th November 2015

Sherlock swam to his room and glared at his brother and mother as they lectured him and forbade him from leaving his room, from talking and seeing Ariel again. Mycroft pinned him with a calculating gaze and pushed him softly into the room before he turned to talk to their mother, muttering lowly as the seaweed to Sherlock’s room gathered and fluttered to obscure Sherlock’s angry face from their view. Sherlock turned furiously on the spot, twisting and diving for his window only to find it barred securely. He fingered the stone and squinted at the makeshift bars, grumpily impressed with his brother’s fast and efficient work. He rattled them and then tried to fit between them, but ultimately growled deeply in frustration and folded his arms, sinking to sit on the floor with his tail curled up under him lithely. 

He watched the shadows of his brother and his mother as they lingered outside the seaweed, and smirked slowly when they finally drifted off to leave him alone. Sherlock looked around his room intensely, scanning the walls and floor and ceiling, then uprooting his shell bed, to rummage beneath it, scrabbling for and upturning a box filled with magnifying glasses. He grasped one and then turned flexibly to swim to the window again, using it to better inspect the bars and then twisting his wrist aside when he noticed a crack in the corner, the oval hole obviously under strain from the rapid injection of the bars.

Sherlock grinned and tapped the magnifying glass against his bottom lip as he scrutinised it penetratingly. Tilting his head he glanced back at the swaying seaweed behind him and then floated down to further push his shell bed away, pulling out a dark folded leather tool kit. It contained lock pick tools of all sizes, as well as an assortment of other utensils, including a few small hammers. Sherlock pulled one of them free, taking a sharp lock pick tool as well, and swam back to the crack. He tapped and scrapped at the crack, knocking the sharp ended tool into the fracture with the hammer, and kept one ear angled to the entrance to his room as he worked as quietly but as quickly as he could.

Slowly, webbed cracks spread and he pushed them onwards greedily, curving it around until he was able to grapple and pull a decent piece of the stone away, making a gap beside the barred window. He sucked on his bottom lip and listened tensely for a few seconds, and then lunged to knock away some more of the wall until the hole was big enough for him to fit through. Gathering up his tools, Sherlock shoved the magnifying glass into a leather pouch within the tool kit, and grabbed for a bag that Ariel had crafted for him, storing the kit inside it. With one more look at the seaweed, Sherlock pushed the bag out to the outside softly and followed it, squeezing and wriggling through the hole he’d made.

Once outside, Sherlock turned to reach inside and pull the sheet of seaweed curtains closed to cover his exit, and then dived for the bag. He hefted it, testing it’s weight to work out how it may affect the speed of his swimming, and slung it over his neck and shoulder, looking around penetratingly as he sneakily swam off without a backward glance. He kept to the shadows and hid within other long curling waves of kelp, slipping the familiar route to Ariel’s secret cavern with flicking eyes and a writhing tail. Pausing with the cave in sight, Sherlock strained his hearing and frowned, then rolled his eyes, making his way over as Ariel sang from within. Sherlock had only ever sung to himself a handful of times, but that was in his past; since moving to Triton’s kingdom, Sherlock hadn’t sang one note. In a way, he missed it; Sherlock loved music. He remembered the time he’d found a human thing with taut strings and a curved, elegant wooden body and how it had felt under his fingers, and the sounds it had made. His mother had snatched it from his hands the moment she had found him with it, and he’d not seen it since.

“…Ask ‘em my questions, and get some answers. What’s a fire and why does it – what’s the word? – burn? When’s it my turn? Wouldn’t I love, love to explore that shore above? Out of the sea. Wish I could be. Part of that world.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to speak and reprimand her for her choice to give away her position with her voice, and reached for the small oddly shaped boulder covering the caves access. A sudden crashing came from within made him pause with a frown and he moved away a little, only to then move back close to listen and peer through a gap between the boulder and the cave, something he pried bigger with his fingers.

“Sebastian?” Ariel exclaimed in a gasp, looking startled and panicked as she looked down at the crab now entangled in her collection of human objects. She winced as he struggled to free himself and glanced at Flounder who looked equally as guilty and surprised.

“Ariel—what, are you mad? How could you—what is all this?” Sebastian stammered as he threw and kicked items from his legs and pincers. 

Ariel nervously fiddled with her flowing hair, twisting it and tugging it out with her fingers, “It, er, it’s just my – collection…”

Sebastian, mockingly, straightened his body and nodded, fiddling with something “Oh. I see. Your collection. Hm…” he murmured before his entire posture shifted and he angrily threw more things away, “If your father knew about this place he’d—”

Flounder surged close to Sebastian looking worried, “You’re not gonna tell him, are you?”

“Oh, please, Sebastian, he would never understand,” Ariel beseeched as she lowered toward the crab with her hands faintly clasped before her in a imploring gesture.

“Ariel,” Sebastian said, once again calm, as he reached for her hand gently. “You’re under a lot of pressure down here. Come with me, I’ll take you home and get you something warm to—”

A shadow of a ship unexpectedly passed overhead, darkening the cave and prompting both Ariel and Sherlock to look up at the same exact moment. Sherlock blinked widely with his heart in his throat and a thrilling spark down his spine, and let go of the boulder. He moved back, clutching the bag at his shoulder and then looked down as he heard Ariel murmur from inside the cave and push the boulder aside to swim out, just as inquiring and in wonder as Sherlock seemed to be.

“Ariel? Ariel!” Sebastian exclaimed as Ariel noticed Sherlock and moved to him with a look of wonder and excitement. She clutched his arm wordlessly and both of them surged to the surface, slowly pushing their heads out of the rippling waves, side by side.

The ship before them was dark and light all at once, its body elegant and curvaceous and stunning. Sherlock had seen many ships, but none of them compared to the one before his eyes, and he gaped at it in awe, flinching back slightly when fireworks lit up the sky in a shower of colourful sparks. Ariel looked on in amazement, faintly giggling, her eyes wide and her hand still wrapped tightly around Sherlock’s arm.

Sebastian and Flounder surfaced around them, “Sherlock! You were told not to come into contact with Ariel! And Ariel, what—what are you—jumpin’ jellyfish!” Sebastian gasped once he noticed the ship, actually leaping from the water in his shock.

Ariel grinned and looked at Sherlock from the corner of her eyes before she let go of him and dived under the water, only to surface again as she swam over to the ship in immense interest, unafraid and thrumming with energy. Sherlock watched her for only a second until he looked at the ship and followed her example with a powerful push of his tail, swimming alongside it with her. Both of them were unable to keep their eyes from the fireworks and the body of the ship, everything about the sight was mesmerising and otherworldly. Sherlock had often fantasied and daydreamed of being so close to living humans on an actual working ship, and he was, for the moment, utterly and completely speechless.

“Sherlock! Ariel! Please, come back!” Sebastian called out behind them.

Sherlock and Ariel looked up at the ship in growing reverence as they neared, and Sherlock turned to glance at Ariel as she dived to get closer and then strongly pulled herself up the body of ship, peering through a hole in the side of the deck to view the humans aboard. Sherlock pursed his mouth and looked the ship over in deliberation, circling around to the opposite side and keeping closer to the back. He strained up from the waves to try and see over the side of the ship to the back end to make sure there were no humans lingering there, before he took Ariel’s initiative and climbed up. He pulled himself higher than her, both to show off and in a surge of his own eagerness to get closer to the action, and peeked over the ledge, running his gaze over the crew who were dancing and playing music.

Sherlock smiled slowly as he watched them, his wet hair clinging to his temples, and shifted along the ledge toward stairs that led higher up the ship. Trying to keep out of sight, but engrossed with what was happening, Sherlock levelled himself up just a little further to admire the way they moved on their legs, studying their clothes and shoes. He tilted his head and ran his gaze over them all, spotting Ariel after a moment and noticing how she gawked at one specific human with what looked like immense attraction. Sherlock rolled his eyes and eyed the human in question himself, squinting roughly with intense scrutiny as he noticed the difference in clothing as well as the way the other humans looked and subtly reacted as they moved around him. 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes suspiciously. It looked as though the human Ariel was interested in was of a higher status than the rest of them. The human was of a strong build with rough fingers and sun kissed skin, obviously a workingman, but his regal features and the healthy shine to his hair and eyes, spoke of a man born from luxury. Most of the others were strong, wiry and just as callused fingered and bronzed, but they were also somewhat gaunt and seemed shaped from years against the harsh winds and waters of the sea.

“What the…?” A voice nearby uttered lowly, the words layered in surprise and so close to Sherlock’s ear, that it briefly made his heart skip.

Overly tensed, Sherlock jerked his head around to come face to face with one of the humans with a scramble of his tail and hands, almost falling back into the waves in his shock. The human was short but bulky, with arms corded with muscle and tanned skin and hair bleached from the sun. He stared at Sherlock with wide eyes, his thin lips parted, and hands half curled and raised in his astonishment, as if he didn’t know whether to fight Sherlock or stay stock still in fear of what Sherlock might do to him. He was the only human in Sherlock’s vicinity, the only one not dancing and distracted; Sherlock blinked, flitted his gaze around nervously, and then lifted his finger to his lips in a helpless and almost automatic gesture. 

The human frowned and lowered his hands, running his eyes down Sherlock’s body to stare at Sherlock’s tail with a look of bewilderment and disbelief. He looked like he wanted to grab at it or touch it, and so Sherlock dropped his tail from view and waited until the human’s attention returned to his face before pushing his finger back to his lips again. The human only stared at the way Sherlock’s hair clung to his neck in response and opened his mouth to speak with a telling inhale, eyes raking to Sherlock’s bared chest. Instantly panicking, Sherlock clambered over to seize the human by his clothing and slapped his hand over his lips. The human stiffened and took several steps backward, almost pulling Sherlock onto the ship with him, but Sherlock yanked him to the ledge strongly and shook his head.

With their faces so close Sherlock could see the colour of the human’s eyes, the small freckles hidden amongst his skin, and each individual blonde eyelash. Sherlock tilted his head and gradually removed his hand when nothing was forthcoming, leaving the lower part of the human’s face damp, and ran his fingers over the human’s jaw, then up his cheek to eagerly catalogue the rough texture of the human’s short stubble. The human huffed with a bunching of his eyebrows and a small, bemused smile, and then slowly moved his own hand up to gingerly touch Sherlock’s face in return, pushing Sherlock’s wet hair back to admire the entirety of his face. 

A thrill ran through Sherlock, a heat flaring in his gut, and he felt his heart thunder as he stared at the human and pulled him until he was all but bending over the ledge of the ship to be closer to Sherlock. The human seemed just as captivated with Sherlock as Sherlock was with him, and the rough fingertips of the human’s hand drifted to the pulse in his throat as if on instinct. Sherlock could hardly breathe he was in such veneration, and he swallowed thickly when the human turned his attention to the curve of his spine, following it with his other hand. Sherlock furrowed his brows gently as the human mapped out Sherlock’s ribs and back muscles, proficiently stroking down toward Sherlock’s waist, seeking out where Sherlock’s skin melded with scales.

“Silence! Silence!” Someone called on the ship, putting an end to the music and commotion, and snapping the human out of his daze. Sherlock blinked and let the human go when he straightened up and turned to face the centre of the ship, his back to Sherlock and his hands gripping the ledge steadily. “It is now my honour and privilege to present our esteemed Prince Eric with a very special, very expensive, very large birthday present.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes. Sherlock has now met John.


	4. Reprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking about bringing in Moriarty...
> 
> Edited: 9th November 2015

Sherlock moved up and peered from under the human’s arm to spy on the one called Eric, finding it to be the one Ariel had been staring at. Eric moved to thump the human who had previously spoken fondly on the back, “Ah, Grimsby – y’old beanpole, you shouldn’t have.”

“I know. Happy birthday, Eric!” Grimsby announced with a flourish as he signalled for a large, gaudy statue of Prince Eric to be revealed. Sherlock looked up at it and wrinkled his nose as the dog at human Eric’s feet growled in discernible aversion.

“Gee, Grim. It’s, er, it’s, er,” Eric stammered awkwardly as he gazed up at it. “It’s really somethin’…”

“Yes, I commissioned it myself. Of course, I had hoped it would be a wedding present, but…” Grimsby trailed off pointedly and Eric rolled his eyes and idly wandered off from the statue. Sherlock arched his eyebrow with vague interest and glanced over at where Ariel was listening in, still out of sight. 

“Come on, Grim, don’t start. Look, you’re not still sore because I didn’t fall for the princess of Glauerhaven, are you?”

Grimsby motioned with his hands as Eric moved to sit up against the ledge of the ship, closest to Ariel, “Oh, Eric, it isn’t me alone. The entire kingdom wants to see you happily settled down with the right girl.”

“Well, she’s out there somewhere. I just—I just haven’t found her yet,” Eric murmured as he gazed out at the sea. Sherlock rolled his eyes and then caught sight of the darkening sky and frowned, lifting himself up behind the blonde haired human still blocking him from sight. Murky clouds were rolling in portentously and the air was heavy with humidity, crackling with some sort of energy. Sherlock flinched when a droplet of rain hit his cheek and reached up to touch it with his fingers as another droplet collided with the back of his neck. 

“Well, perhaps you haven’t been looking hard enough,” Grimsby stated as he stepped closer, and Sherlock outstretched his hand toward the blonde haired human faintly as the clouds gradually compacted and merged to blot out the stars and the moon.

Eric smirked and looked back at Grimsby, shifting on the ledge, “Believe me, Grim, when I find her I’ll know – without a doubt. It’ll just – bam! – hit me – like lightning.”

Sherlock shifted his position at the abrupt clash of thunder and watched a jagged slice of lightning as it lit up the sky. He turned his head into the sudden flush of wind as it picked up and plumped out the sails, whipping ropes and rippling across the humans’ clothes, and flitted his eyes about in raising terror.

“Hurricane a’comin! Stand fast! Secure the riggin’!” One of the humans bellowed as the storm hit, scattering the rest of them through the sudden downpour of rain; including the blonde haired one in front of Sherlock who instantly forgot Sherlock’s presence and rushed off.

Sherlock watched him go in disappointment and turned to regard Eric as he ran to pick up some rope before Sherlock slipped off the ledge as the ship swayed dangerously in the churning waves. As he hit the water, Sherlock winced and twisted, looking up as he surged back to the surface, observing in unease while the storm seemed to toss the ship back and forth, throwing waves of foaming water onto the deck in violent torrents. Sherlock rode one such wave to get back close to the ship and scrambled at it, swimming around the side to search for Ariel; only spotting her when he noticed Scuttle getting blown away through a ferocious updraft that hurled him upwards.

The ship was abruptly thrown over a gigantic curling wave and Sherlock clawed and lunged for a loose rope as it careered from the roll of the wave and crashed back down, tilting sickeningly to one side and splattering Sherlock roughly with water, plastering him into the side of the ship and knocking his head into the wood in the process. Sherlock grunted and lost his grip the same moment the ship was taken by another wave, burning his hand as it dragged down the rope and he was thrown back into the water along with Ariel, who was finally taken by the strong wind.

Ariel twirled to face him in the water, sharing a look of concern, and then grabbed him as they both swam back up in time to witness a bolt of lightning as it crackled down from the sky to hit the sails, igniting them on fire in a shower of sparks. Gasping in horror, both Sherlock and Ariel gazed up with wide eyes and back paddled, taken by panic and powerless to do more than watch as the flames grew and spread over the fluttering white material. In the corner of his eyes Sherlock noticed the sudden appearance of jagged rocks, which were highlighted by another flash of lightning, and outstretched his hand helplessly as the ship headed straight for them at speed.

As it collided brutally Sherlock’s mind flashed with images of the sunken ships in the graveyard at the bottom of the ocean, filled with skeletons and broken objects, and he shook his head vigorously, swimming toward the ship with Ariel beside him as the sudden crash threw the crew into the water. Sherlock froze at the sight and then looked around with alarm, separating from Ariel without hesitation so he could dive under water to be able see clearer. From below he eyed the kicking of legs of the crowd of humans trying to swim in the unforgiving waves and made toward them, keeping out of sight until he noticed the blonde haired human sinking quickly, knocked out cold from a bump to the head by falling debris. 

Sherlock shot toward him without thought, wrapping his arms around his chest from behind and powerfully beat his tail to keep the human afloat. The human was a heavy weight in his arms and Sherlock struggled as a wave engulfed them, pushing them down and under again and again, before Sherlock grit his teeth and jostled the human enough to wake him from his stupor.

Abruptly exhaling a mass of bubbles the blonde haired human struggled into consciousness and haphazardly tried to swim upward, his hands reaching and grabbing instinctively while he kicked his legs, muscles taut and contracting and bumping into Sherlock in his haste. Sherlock gripped him tighter in response and then let go enough to slip around to face the human head on, nudging him and then cupping his chin firm enough to hurt. The human squinted in the saltwater and fought to free himself until he noticed Sherlock and lunged toward him with steely fingers and pleading eyes. 

Sherlock adjusted his grasp and undulated his body against the human’s to push them closer to the surface again, grateful when the human worked his legs, oddly in sync with Sherlock’s tail. Together they broke up from another powerful wave where the human gasped and coughed, dragging in huge gulps of air whilst spewing up mouthfuls of seawater and Sherlock cupped a hand around the human’s head to keep it upturned. In his peripheral vision Sherlock noticed a lifeboat containing the rest of the crew just before Eric stood up in it, his voice carrying over the roaring of the wind and fire as he shouted in distress. Sherlock frowned his attention caught, and took a moment to watch as Eric dived back into the sea to swim toward the ship again, clambering aboard. Confused, Sherlock clutched the blonde haired human to his body, unwilling to let go, even when the human pointed to the lifeboat meaningfully between the bouts of hacking coughs. 

“Th-the boat,” the human wheezed. “Take me to the boat, please!”

Ignoring him, Sherlock looked up the burning ship at the sound of barking and sighed, rolling his eyes with a scoff. He saw Ariel in the distance and shifted his focus between her and the human in deliberation before sighing again at the human’s squirming and pushing him toward the lifeboat. Sherlock made sure the other humans noticed the one in his arms and then submerged back under water to swim toward Ariel, touching her arm and shoulder as he surfaced and following her worried gaze. Through the flames Sherlock could make out the figure of Eric and watched with Ariel as he evaded falling wreckage to call out to his dog.

“Jump Max! Come on boy, jump, you can do it Max!” Eric shouted with his arms outstretched, waving his hands until the dog leaped into his grasp heavily. Sherlock squinted as he followed Eric’s movements, grimacing when Eric’s body jerked suddenly downwards and he threw Max into the sea as he did so, struggling in place.

“He’s stuck!” Sherlock told Ariel just as Grimsby yelled Eric’s name, pulling Max onto the small lifeboat. Eric peered over the side of the ship and then looked back as the entire ship exploded in a burn of light and a bloom of dark smoke, throwing sharp splinters into the air.

Ariel gasped and then abruptly swam forward with Sherlock at her side, searching the wreckage worriedly, her head whipping from side to side. Sherlock scanned the area around him with a calmer attitude and then turned with a smirk when he saw the top half of Eric’s body sprawled on a piece of wood. Grabbing Ariel’s shoulder briefly he pointed and dived with her just as Eric slipped off and dropped under the waves. They reached him quickly and Sherlock seized his waist as Ariel grappled with Eric’s shoulders, and together they propelled him upward, keeping him above the water and pulling him away from the still blasting ship.

It took longer than Sherlock would have liked to lug Eric in the direction of land, and he blamed it on the choppy waves, dark sky and his lack of knowledge with the best route for land. Sherlock eyed the sky as it cleared, somewhat glad when he noticed Scuttle flying overhead, and grunted and huffed as they hauled Eric’s heavy body through the waves, and then manhandled him onto the closest piece of land in sight. 

Panting, Ariel awkwardly dragged Eric further inland with Sherlock pushing at his legs, and then she collapsed beside him, cupping the back of Eric’s head and touching his chest gently with concern. Sherlock slipped to rest the opposite side of him, and peered at the stretch of the human’s body with sudden and immense fascination, fumbling into his bag to retrieve his magnifying glass and inspect Eric’s legs and toenails.

Ariel glanced up as Scuttle circled and then landed gently nearby, “Is he – dead?” she asked meekly, watching as Scuttle pulled open Eric’s eyelids.

“It’s hard to say,” Scuttle murmured, walking over Eric’s stomach to reach his feet, nabbing the one Sherlock was inspecting to press it against his head to listen carefully, his face saddening. “Oh, I – I can’t make out a heartbeat.”

“You’re an idiot,” Sherlock muttered as he looked over at the bird with distaste, snatching the foot back.

“No, look! He’s breathing.” Ariel gasped as she leaned further over Eric, moving a piece of his dark hair aside as Sherlock sat up to regard them both silently. “He’s so, beautiful…what would I give, to live where you are? What would I pay, to stay here beside you? What would I do to see you, smiling at me?”

Sherlock turned at the faint sound of barking in the distance and put his magnifying glass away, dropping Eric’s foot to the sand, “Ariel…” 

“Where would we walk? Where would we run? If we could stay all day in the sun? Just you and me, and I could be, part of your world.”

“Ariel!” Sherlock hissed as the barking became louder and Max ran toward Eric, followed by Grimsby calling Eric’s name. Sherlock grabbed Ariel’s arm and shuffled inelegantly back into the water, tugging her quickly under just as Max bounded over to lick Eric’s face as he stirred further.

Ariel looked forlornly love-struck and Sherlock pulled her a few feet or so away from the shore before he allowed her to surface again. She pulled herself up onto a rock to watch Eric from a distance as he stood and swayed, talking to Grimsby who frowned at him with bemusement and clutched him when his legs ultimately buckled. 

Sherlock turned as Flounder surfaced with Sebastian on his head and backed away when Sebastian scowled, “We just gotta forget this whole thing ever happened. The sea king will never know,” he said, glancing down at Flounder as he peeked up at him. “You won’t tell him, I won’t tell him. I will stay in one piece.”

“I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but I know something’s starting right now. Watch and you’ll see, some day I’ll be, part of your world!” Ariel sang with the crashing of a wave, which thankfully drowned out her words as Max barked and looked back.

Sherlock pressed his lips together tightly in exasperation and then gestured for her to come back into the water, “Come on, Ariel.”


	5. Bruises

Sherlock separated from Ariel on their swim back with a vague wave in her direction that she only half returned in her wistful state, and sneaked off without being noticed by Sebastian, clutching the strap of his bag and trying not to let his mind wander to everything he had witnessed. The image of the human’s eyes and the feel of his fingers on Sherlock’s skin were still fresh in his mind, and Sherlock smiled dreamily as he recalled the way the human had looked, reacted and clutched at him. His body was still thrumming with energy and heat from the battle with the waves, and Sherlock drifted to a stop with a sudden dawning of realisation. Lifting a hand, Sherlock prodded three fingers at the bump on his head from his impact with the ship and cursed, frantically trying to hide it with his flowing hair. As he did so he noticed that the places where the human had gripped him were pinked and bruise-like and Sherlock grimaced, rubbing at them until the rays of the sun leaked down to flicker over his hands and caught his attention.

Glancing up, Sherlock pushed off at a quicker pace, dashing between rays of light until he was home. Silently he slipped to his barred window and peered in through them cautiously. The room looked the same as it had when Sherlock had left, the shell bed still tipped over and unmoved, and Sherlock strained his hearing as he carefully fit the bag through the gap in the wall, dropping it gently to the floor. He followed behind it, squeezing and wriggling back through the hole, and gathered the bag back up immediately, stashing it behind his shell bed when he righted it into place with a soft grunt. Sherlock then moved back to his window to cover the hole with the seaweed curtain more securely, and sighed with a contorted expression up at the surface, his mind once again fixated on the human he’d saved.

“Where were you, brother mine?”

Sherlock turned sharply, watched Mycroft float in through the swaying seaweed, and backed up subtly to hide the hole in the wall while he tugged the curtain into place. Mycroft eyed him and arched his brow, then frowned, swimming suddenly up to grab at Sherlock’s chin, angling his head to inspect the bump Sherlock knew he had unsuccessfully concealed. Sherlock fought and snarled, struggling away from his brother’s hold to press up against the wall with gritted teeth, folding his arms to hide the bruises littering his skin there.

“Where were you?” Mycroft demanded. “Sherlock, you were forbidden to see her! Must you cause trouble wherever we go?—Do you forget why we are here in the first place? That the King could have turned us away and could still do so!”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and stubbornly refused to look his brother in the face until Mycroft knowingly made toward his bed, “No!” Sherlock exclaimed, only realising his error when Mycroft twisted around and snatched at his wrist, staring at the finger bruises strewn along his arm.

“Where were you?” Mycroft asked, letting Sherlock go when he squirmed but narrowing his eyes and glancing briefly over his shoulder to make sure their mother couldn’t overhear. 

“You know where; the surface! Obviously,” Sherlock spat as he drifted back away from Mycroft. “Neither you nor the King can keep me locked to the sea forever, Mycroft—at any rate, you’ve been to the surface. I know you have. Why can you go but I cannot? What’s the difference between you and I?”

“You went to the surface with the Princess?” Mycroft said, his voice low and stern and angry. “Sherlock—”

Sherlock huffed and pushed Mycroft aside to rest down on his shell bed, feeling suddenly tired and fed up, “No one need know…well, no one but me, Ariel, Flounder and Sebastian…”

“Sebastian?” Mycroft arched his eyebrow angrily and crossed his arms, swimming shortly before Sherlock in tight circles, “And those bruises—You met a human, I presume. Or rather a human met you. Grabbed you, and quite firmly by the looks of it. They’re certainly not her finger marks —You’re lucky to escape with your life!”

“I didn’t escape,” Sherlock muttered and ran his fingers over the bruises. “And I wasn’t grabbed – not for what you think anyway. They’re nothing like the King portrays them to be, Mycroft. They’re not all alike. Did you see and encounter nothing on your journeys above? I hadn’t been meaning to be seen, understandably, but…I misjudged the number of humans aboard the ship and one of them—”

Mycroft paused before him tersely, “Did you drown him?”

“What? No!” Sherlock frowned.

Mycroft tilted his head, “You let him go? After the human had seen you?” 

“He won’t say anything,” Sherlock said brusquely, defending the human with a clenching of his hands. “If I had thought for one moment that he would have endangered me or Ariel, then I—”

“Did she get grabbed or seen by a human?” Mycroft queried offhandedly.

Sherlock glared and swept a hand animatedly, “I was not grabbed like that! There was a storm and we—”

“Was she seen or grabbed?”

“No,” Sherlock answered shortly. “Not that I know of, not that I saw. So you can rest easy knowing that there is nought a scratch or a mark on her pretty skin, and King Triton will be none the wiser. She merely watched them, and then saved one and sang to his unconscious body like an idiot—She is forever singing, it’s tediously annoying.”

“Yet you continuously swim around with her—Is she going to be a problem?” Mycroft continued to question coldly. “Are you?”

Sherlock scowled up at his brother and pursed his lips before answering, “No.”

Mycroft stared at him silently and then dipped his chin, “What if she wants to see this human again?”

“She’ll pine and sing and moan, and eventually get over it,” Sherlock shrugged. “She’s young and a mermaid.”

“And you?”

“What about me?” Sherlock snapped.

Mycroft regarded Sherlock until Sherlock fidgeted uneasily, and then turned to the hole in the wall, “This will get fixed tomorrow and you are to remain at home until further notice.”

“You can’t imprison me, Mycroft,” Sherlock scoffed, folding his arms and curling his tail. “That should be obvious seeing as I got out and all…”

“Yes I can,” Mycroft replied and shot Sherlock such a hard and unyielding glance that Sherlock cringed. “I can put up with your little… collection; with your secret adventures with the Princess to sunken ships and hidden caverns; but I shan’t put up with you sneaking off to risk your life on the surface. You better hope that what you’ve done doesn’t have consequences.”

“Like what?” Sherlock argued furiously. 

“Other than Sebastian telling the King everything and getting both you and Ariel in deep water, nothing at all,” Mycroft drawled as he swam slowly from Sherlock’s room. “Enjoy your freedom whilst you have it, little brother.”

Sherlock thumped his tail on the ground and then surged up, swimming around in short loops and pushing over to the hole in the window determinedly, only to stutter at the sudden appearance of Flounder, “What are you doing here?” Sherlock said in a quiet hiss of surprise.

“Oh. You have bars on your window,” Flounder muttered as he eyed them with a look of deliberation. 

“Your powers of deduction, as always, astound me,” Sherlock said sarcastically. 

After a moment of faint glaring Flounder sighed and moved closer, “I…need your help with something,” he told Sherlock. “It’s a present…for Ariel, but I can’t really move it on my own.”

Sherlock frowned and cocked his head aside in interest, “I assume this “present” is large then? Too large and hefty for you to—Oh. Oh…it’s that dreadful statue isn’t it? Are you sure she wants that? It’s ghastly,” he murmured and wrinkled his nose. “Can’t you get Urchin to help you?—You know what? Never mind. I was on my way out anyway. Move aside.”

Sherlock gestured Flounder away but turned to tug the bag free from under his bed before he wriggled out of the hole again, following Flounder at a steady pace that allowed Sherlock to wonder about Ariel and think again about the humans they had encountered. Sherlock felt his mouth tugging into a boyish grin and blew bubbles gently in a sigh, rubbing the bruises at his arms in recollection and rolling to swim facing the surface.

Although, as he went the recent reminiscences of the human gave way to other errant thoughts, and he found his mind returning to his brother and his threat to keep Sherlock locked away. Sherlock wasn’t sure how long his brother wanted to do so, nor if he could without Sherlock first finding a way out or their mother interfering, but either way it was grim. Sherlock sneered to himself and closed his fingers around the strap of his bag absentmindedly. He would need to work something out and talk to Ariel. 

“This way,” Flounder told him, breaking Sherlock out of his reverie as they neared and then passed by Ariel’s secret cavern, which apparently became less of a secret by the day. “There it is! Right over there!”

The statue was deeply embedded in the sand and awkwardly askew, and Sherlock swam round it for a moment, tapping his chin thoughtfully. Around it was scattered debris from the ship; pieces of jagged wood, a broken door, a large bell, a few of the sailors shoes, and a portion of the stairs that had lead up to the helm. Sherlock lingered around the ship’s wheel with interest and vowed to come back for it before he turned and dived for some rope that was half buried in sand, then grabbed for some more, collecting it around his arms and hands. Tying it all together he swam back to the statue and slipped around it after giving the entire thing another once over.

“Do you think we can move it?” Flounder asked as Sherlock worked. “I saw it sink and, well, I thought she’d want to have it – I want to get it into the cave.”

Sherlock paused and looked over at him, “I thought as much—it’ll take most of the day, probably, but it’s not improbable. – Gosh, it looks even worse up close…”

Flounder swam over as Sherlock finished tying the rope to the statue, “Ariel really likes that human, huh?” 

“Looks that way,” Sherlock murmured and shoved at the statue strongly, pushing on it until it wasn’t at such an awkward angle. He eyed the sand around the base and squinted to judge the distance between them and the cave.

“Do you think she’s in love with him?” Flounder asked as he neared Sherlock’s back; peering through his flowing, curly hair to watch what he was doing.

Sherlock furrowed his brow deeply in irritation and glanced back over his shoulder, “As stupid as it is, yes. I saw the way she looked at him. But it can’t be love. You don’t just fall in love with someone at first glance. It just isn’t possible. She might think she’s in love with him, but she can’t be. Infatuation, is more accurate. Nonsensical infatuation.”

Flounder frowned, “But she saved his life and…the way she was singing to him…?”

“So what? She saved your life from that shark. And she sings to, and with, you all the time. Does that mean she’s in love with you as well? -- Look, she doesn’t know much of anything about him. In that one moment all she gathered is that he’s a Prince whom spends a lot of his time at sea, needs to be wed – according to those around him anyway – and whom loves his four-legged pet quite a bit. So much that he risked his life to save it. Not sure if that makes him brave or foolish…”

“Brave,” Flounder answered with a nod, swimming around to face Sherlock when Sherlock hummed in rebuttal. “I saw you save a human too—”

Sherlock tugged on the ropes, testing the strength of the knots he’d secured, “Yes, but not because I’m in love with him.”

“Why then?” Flounder asked with an expression of complacency that Sherlock instantly disliked.

“Do you want help with this stupid statue, or not?” Sherlock glowered and promptly ignored Flounder’s wide smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There! That explains how the bloody hell Flounder got that huge statue of Eric into the cave! Sherlock helped him. Done.
> 
> Also, though it doesn't show much time passing in the film (but for the sky changing colour whenever we see it), I'm going to say that after Ariel helped Eric, she swam home, went to sleep, and then the next day she is all humming and in love and all that goodness. When she swam up to the ship, it was dusk, then the storm came, she rescued him, and then it was day...so she goes home after singing about being a part of his world, gushes about it to herself, sleeps, and then wakes up the next day just as love-sick as before.  
> The film had me believe, for the longest time, that she just didn't sleep in the water. She did most of everything in one gulp (heh) without rest. I think at least one day should go by after her rescue of Eric. At least! Right? Right.


	6. Jim

By the time Sherlock had finally gotten the statue situated it was dusk and he was overly tired and worn out, his muscles quivering and burning with overuse. He untangled the ropes from the smooth stone, picking at the knots deftly, and coiled them up and packed them away in his bag, before swimming back to look at it from a few tail flips away. It was slightly off-centre and took up a huge portion of the cave, and Sherlock pulled yet another disgruntled face at it with a shake of his head, turning to regard Flounder and crossing his arms. Flounder beamed at him and then swam up and around it, moving with more speed and energy for a fish that had been recently tugging vainly at one of the ropes Sherlock had thrown to him.

“She’s gonna love it!” Flounder exclaimed happily with a twirl of his fins. “Don’t you think so? – Thank you so much! This was a great idea!”

“Yes. As great an idea as it was to name you Flounder,” Sherlock muttered and rubbed his arms, flexing his fingers and biceps as he turned and swam out of the cave, peering up at the surface briefly. He felt a sudden yearning, an urge to swim up and try and find the blonde haired human from before, but pushed the thought aside. He was probably not going to see the human again, and he had nothing tangible to remember him by, nothing but bruises that would eventually heal. 

Flounder followed him with confusion, “What do you mean by that?”

“Your name. It’s wrong. I’ve seen Flounder,” Sherlock informed him, turning back to replace the boulder. “It’s a group of flatfish species. Why would you be named after another type of fish? It’s just peculiar—I would guess and say it was given to you and meant to be offensive in some way, but flatfish are very interesting. Especially concerning eye migration.”

“Eye what?” Flounder asked as Sherlock faced him again.

Sherlock huffed through his nose and shook his head, swimming away, “Forget it.”

“You’re weird,” Flounder said as he joined Sherlock, swimming just above Sherlock’s right shoulder. 

“Thank you,” Sherlock muttered and looked up at him. “Is there a reason why you’re following me?—It’s because it’s late, isn’t it? You really are a guppy.”

“Where are you going? The Kingdom is that way,” Flounder told him when he glanced around and floated to a stop, frowning at Sherlock. “You shouldn’t go off on your own, Sherlock—it’s not safe!”

Sherlock shrugged and kept swimming, “I’m enjoying my freedom,” he mumbled lowly and gave one quick glance back at Flounder before he shot off without another word, flipping up sand in his wake. 

“Come back, okay? So we can show Ariel the statue together!” Flounder called out behind him.

Sherlock rolled his eyes but lifted a hand in vague acknowledgement while he rounded a looming rock, turning even further away from the Kingdom. Ignoring the darkening ocean around him he quickened his speed and nimbly twisted and surged onwards, faintly frowning when he looked back over his shoulder with an intense contemplating gaze. 

Although his brother had hinted at knowing that Sherlock and Ariel visited the ship graveyard, that didn’t mean that his brother knew his way around it, or the different paths to and from it. Once there it was easy to get lost within the mass of rotting wood and circling fish, and Sherlock lifted his chin and continued on, diving down and through a tunnel of dark seaweed and rocks, scaring a school of fish lingering near the exit. The route he decided to take was awkward and winding, and not one he had shown to anyone, it led into the bowels of the graveyard; to depths not many would dare to visit. Sherlock himself still had not seen all there was there, finding the chill and the dark a little taxing, and that was during the day. With the waters darkening as day gave way to night, Sherlock knew it would be difficult and cold and dangerous, but he’d be safe from prying eyes and far, far away from bars on windows.

Sherlock knew his brother couldn’t keep him locked up, not for good, but the thought of being confined to his room, if just for a few moments, made Sherlock’s skin crawl. He would spend a few days alone but free in the ship graveyard, make it seem as though he had swam away, and then would later return to a hysterical mother and resentful brother. It had worked before; Sherlock saw no reason why it would not work again, though it had been years since he’d tried it.

Perhaps Sherlock could visit the surface again? Try and find his human? Sherlock peered up and sighed, shaking his head. It was too risky so soon after already being up there, and the human was one for the sea; Sherlock’s didn’t know much but he knew that humans who liked the sea would hardly remain in one place. The human had been young too, young and spry and strong, and judging from his accent, not local. Sherlock recalled the few words the human had spoken and put them against the words the Prince had said, finding slight differences in how words were pronounced; and searched through the many dialects of fish and merfolk alike in his mind that he had categorised during his family’s journey to Triton’s Kingdom. It was interesting that the language under the sea was the same as above, surely that showed how closely knit the humans were to merpeople?

Language was something easily picked up under the sea. A fish migrating from one corner of the ocean to the other would learn several different languages to get by safely. Sherlock wondered if it was the same for the humans. It had only taken several days for Sherlock himself to pick up the current language and be fluent enough to get by without problems.

It was fascinating that spoken language between the sea and the surface were almost exactly the same, yet written language was anything but. Sherlock had seen the written language of the humans many times over, scrawled on maps and in books and letters, and even carved into ships, but he had no idea what any of it said. Without someone to teach him, the symbols in front of him were mysterious and unknown, taunting him with unobtainable knowledge. There was no way for him to learn it, not without some help, and no one that Sherlock knew could read human.

Sherlock slowed when he finally arrived in the depths of the ship graveyard and squinted through the murk, adjusting his bag and clutching it tightly. The remains of the ships at that low level were even more skeletal than those further up, and Sherlock eyed them awkwardly as he shifted through with agile movements and made his way to the only ship he had searched in that area.

The inside of the husk of what had once been a Captain’s cabin was darker than outside, and Sherlock took a moment to let his eyes become accustomed to it, suppressing a shiver at the cold. However, once he could see better he stiffened and jerked back at the sight of another merman lingering silently in the corner. The merman was facing Sherlock and staring, his tail coiled beneath him and his black hair a mass of short flowing strands around his head. Through the darkness, Sherlock could barely make out his face, but it seemed as though he was grinning.

“H-how did you find this place?” Sherlock demanded when nothing was forthcoming, and flinched backward with one instinctive flip of his tail when the merman slowly unfurled from the corner to drift closer. “I didn’t think anyone would…come here—no one comes here…”

The merman was short with a slender build and pale skin, and while in the dim light of the cabin he looked somewhat unassuming and unthreatening, his face and the expression upon it, was anything but. Sherlock narrowed his eyes and swam subtly and slowly back to the entrance of the cabin, slipping through a pallid, weak curtain of light from the surface.

“I live here,” the merman finally said, his voice smooth and soft with a musical sort of tilt at the end, as if he was being deliberately sarcastic or condescending.

“No you don’t,” Sherlock retorted and moved further back when the merman loomed ever nearer.

The merman laughed with a sigh and suddenly swam close, illuminated by the beam of light near Sherlock, “No. I don’t,” he said, grinning ever wider with a shock of white teeth that somehow made Sherlock involuntarily shudder. “My, my, but look at you—I didn’t think you’d look so…virginal up close.”

Sherlock frowned and lurched back, straightening his spine to his full length when the merman abruptly surged forward to put their faces scant inches apart. The merman stared at Sherlock, taking immense interest in Sherlock’s eyes most of all with a sharp twitch to the corners of his mouth. There was something off about the merman, something more than his strange and almost eccentric behaviour, and Sherlock reached inconspicuously into his bag with one hand, feeling around for something sharp. 

Sherlock regarded the merman back without flinching, “Who are you?” 

The merman’s focus shifted very faintly, “Jim!” he replied in an overly happy tone.

“Jim?” Sherlock repeated, looking at him side-on suspiciously. “That’s not your real name...”

“It was someone’s name though.” Jim replied and motioned very slightly to a dirty and algae covered skeleton with a missing skull and one leg. “His name, probably.”

Sherlock glanced over at it with a crease between his brows, “How do you know?”

“His name is carved into the wood over there,” Jim told him and tilted his head aside slowly when Sherlock was unable to stop a sudden surge of shock and turned to look over at the wood in question with immense interest. “Humans do the most… outlandish things, wouldn’t you say?”

“You can read their writing?” Sherlock asked in awe and faint envy, before he turned back to face Jim whom pushed ever closer toward Sherlock. 

Jim smiled again and his tail writhed through the water below him before he answered, “There’s a lot I can do, dear Sherlock.” He seemed to notice the moment Sherlock’s attention instantly tightened further in wariness and allowed Sherlock to bend lithely back and into the cabin doorframe away from him, “I’ve been watching you, my pretty little vestal one. You’re trouble, you are. Pushing everything out of alignment. Big brother, Mycroft, had the right idea about locking you up.”

Annoyed, Sherlock scowled, “How do you—?”

“I mean, the idea is as dull as he is, but it has some merit—at least then you wouldn’t be able to get in the way,” Jim carried on, as if Sherlock hadn’t spoken, swaying eccentrically in front of him. “What to do with you now that I have you, though?—Would you like to play a little game? I know what you want.” 

“Do you?” Sherlock mumbled, though he was too intrigued to turn away and leave, and let his fingers loosen on the first sharp tool in his bag.

“You’re bored down here. So very bored. You wish for something…more—to be amongst the humans,” Jim said with a sigh, his hand against his chest. “Don’t we all—what would you give up to have that wish granted?”

Sherlock blinked in confusion, “Hypothetically?”

“If you like,” Jim shrugged and flashed another one of his sinister smiles.

“…Why would I have to give up something?” Sherlock asked as he shifted around and floated away from the cabin entrance, his tail rippling slowly.

“Everything comes at a price, darling,” Jim crooned, following Sherlock, first with his eyes, and then with his body, twisting around in a steady and ominous shift, before he unexpectedly lunged toward Sherlock and grabbed his wrists, pulling his hands forward in front of him, dislodging the one from his bag. “Your hands? Could you do without them? Would you give up your hands to have legs and feet? To wander on land and ask as many questions as you want?—It would hurt, of course, as they were sliced off inch by inch, but at least you’d be free from your brother, free from the sea…” 

Sherlock wrenched his hands back with a glare and swam back, altering the strap of his bag as Jim trailed after him. Jim’s face was cast in darkness as they moved away from the light source at the bowed entrance to the cabin, and Sherlock squinted again until his eyes adjusted, swallowing at the look of malicious that gleamed in Jim’s almost black eyes.

“How about your pretty little mouth?” Jim purred as he reached out to smear cold, strong fingers into Sherlock’s lips briefly, backing Sherlock up into the corner Jim had previously been lingering in when Sherlock had first entered. “It could be stitched up or cut completely from your face!”

When Sherlock’s back connected with the slimy, chilled wall of rotten wood, he shied against it a little, “Why would I—?”

Jim pounced on him, cupping his hands around Sherlock’s face, and hovered his thumbs a few inches away menacingly, “Your eyes then? Your striking multi-coloured eyes? Yes. They are the best price, I think…the best thing you possess, second only to your mind, of course, but what fun would it be to take that?” he murmured within a manic chortle, and pressed his thumbs closer. “It wouldn’t take much to just…pop them out. You’d be blind, but you’d be human, and you’d be free to do as you pleased! What a price to pay to be where you’ve always dreamt of being!”

Sherlock glowered and shoved Jim backward suddenly, swimming out and away, but Jim merely snagged his wrist and pulled him back around, “Why are you asking me all this? It’s not like you have the power to turn my tail into legs yourself! Only a Sea Witch has that sort of power!” Sherlock snarled and fought at the hand wrapped around his arm with a clench of his jaw. “Let go!”

“Hm,” Jim hummed as he tugged Sherlock up against him, “What you say is indeed true—tell me, what do you know about sea witches?”

Sherlock continued to glower but ceased struggling to answer, “I only know of one in these parts and she is a [Cecaelia](http://www.succubus.net/wiki/Cecaelia). It is said that almost all of them are and not much is known on why this is. Either they are born that way or are transformed into such because of the evil magic that they craft…”

“And what do you know of the sea witch whom lives around here?” Jim asked gently as he stared into Sherlock’s eyes.

Sherlock swept out his free arm with a shrug, “Merely her name and the fact that she has kidnapped—”

“Kidnap? Oh no! She doesn’t kidnap—everyone who goes to see her, does so willingly,” Jim corrected him with a tut and a patronising pout. “This is why no one lifted a fin when you tried to explain your little theory to the King about that one missing merman several moons ago. The merman visited the sea witch under his own free will and so quite a number thought that he deserved whatever awaited him at Ursula’s dwelling, as he was stupid enough to go— So many that end up grovelling at her tentacles are lonely, stupid, pathetic creatures with no where else to turn. They yearn and desire something so strongly, are so obsessively infatuated by it, that they will do anything to get it.”

At the mention of the one word he’d said earlier to Flounder, Sherlock lifted his eyebrows in realisation and smirked when Jim’s own smile faltered, “So, Ursula is after Ariel now then?—but what does that have to do with you? What do you care what happens or if I get in the way or not?”

Jim’s smile stretched wide again, “The little mermaid princess is not the only one fanatically enraptured though, is she?” he said instead of answering Sherlock’s questions, drawing him ever closer. “…Why do you care what happens? Hm? You’re not exactly her real friend, are you?—I see the way you look at her, when the act is failing and the mask is slipping. You’re using her. She is the only one with any sort of interest in the human world, and you’re using her to indulge yourself. You don’t care about her. You don’t care about the sea. You care about nothing but exploration and enigmas and… humans—Why don’t you let me give you what you want, what you need? Let Jim fix it for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy boy!
> 
> Not all is as it seems with him, as always!
> 
> ...And yes, I made up a lot of shite for how Mermaids can understand people when they are basically worlds apart. So sue me.


	7. Your Heart

Sherlock hesitated a long, tense few moments, and allowed Jim to clutch at his upper arms and stare into his eyes. Sherlock thought about what Jim had said and what he had not said, and tilted his head in thought, shifting focus to the skeleton in the cabin and on its one remaining leg and foot as he shifted his tail. The thought of being human, of owning legs to walk and run and jump and fight, was something he’d often dreamt about, even as a merboy. His old collection of human stuff had once been vast and cluttering before his mother had found the stash and ordered him rid of it, before then taking it upon herself to do away with Sherlock’s prized possessions when Sherlock refused to do so. Mycroft had done nothing to help neither his mother nor Sherlock, and had merely watched on with a distant, impassive look in his eyes whenever Sherlock happened to glance over. Sherlock had pleaded with his family, screamed and wailed and shouted, but it only led to more of Sherlock’s collection being thrown out.

His father had done nothing to help either. The merman seemed meek but shutoff, and was quick to agree whole-heartedly to Sherlock’s mother whenever his opinion was called for; Sherlock couldn’t be sure if his father did it to keep on his mother’s good side or because he honestly had no interest in what Sherlock did or collected. Sherlock was sure his father had seen him smuggling in human treasure many a time as a merboy, but his father had not said a word about it to anyone. 

Sherlock thought of all those things he had scavenged in his early life that were now lost again, and thought of finding it all fresh and new on the surface as a human; instead of rotten and warped by the sea like they had been when Sherlock had come across them. He thought of walking with the humans, perhaps even sailing with them. He thought about finding out how they worked, what they thought, how they lived, and why they did what they did. Being human had been something he’d wanted and yearned for longer than Ariel had, that was for certain.

With his thoughts suddenly on Ariel, Sherlock glanced back at Jim, “What is Ursula to you?”

“Mm,” Jim grinned and slid his hands to Sherlock’s elbows as he coiled his tail in a lazy arch, laughing manically, “Finally asking all the right questions—Shame I won’t be answering any of them!” 

“You like games,” Sherlock said loudly over Jim’s laughter as he struggled free of Jim’s grasp to swim back a few inches. “What sort of games, do you like?”

Jim drifted around Sherlock in a predatory circle, “Fun ones.”

“And this game with Ursula and Ariel, that’s one of the fun ones then, correct?” Sherlock asked as he tried to keep a wary eye on Jim, clutching his bag close to his body cautiously and protectively. “So, whatever I’m preventing is, in association, thwarting you and your little game!—”

Jim pushed up close to Sherlock’s back and leaned over his shoulder, grasping a sudden painful fist of Sherlock’s curls, “Perhaps you will offer up your exquisite hair as a payment for what you desire?” he mumbled almost absentmindedly into Sherlock’s ear with a sharp nip of teeth. “Have it scraped off along with your scalp!” 

“—You probably somehow pointed Ursula into Ariel’s path from the very start of all this, because I very much doubt that she was constantly spying on Ariel just on the off chance that she would reveal an obsession with which Ursula could easily exploit,” Sherlock carried on, twisting away from Jim with a wince at the resulting pull to his hair, and backing up toward what had once been the window to the cabin. “But why? Why assist her? It can’t just be for entertainment—And how have you been able to trick and play a sea witch? Ursula is powerful, she—”

“Everyone has a weakness, my dear one,” Jim interrupted as he crowded after Sherlock, staring and smiling and laughing. “She used to live at the Palace.”

Sherlock blinked at the new information and moved further back, “Revenge.”

“Jealousy. Greed. Superiority. Rage,” Jim said in a singsong sort of voice as he bent oddly in place and rocked madly, swimming in a loop to come to a stop near Sherlock and grasp his arm, his fingers overlaying the bruises from the blonde haired human. “I love to see folk squirm—especially you. I’ve not been watching you long, of course, but I have been watching closely. Although you are immeasurably curious about humans, you were somewhat content to merely explore, collect, and store – Until, however, you met a human face to face! Then your curiosity deepened and twisted into something richer, into something more!”

“Let go,” Sherlock uttered lowly as he stared down at Jim’s hand, feeling it tighten along with the increasing beat of his heart.

“Curiosity can be such a dangerous thing,” Jim cackled darkly as he gripped harder and harder, his eyes oddly bright in the dark when Sherlock looked up furiously.

Something was swirling around behind Jim, a liquid merge of colours and bubbles, and Sherlock frowned at it in bewilderment until Jim tugged him quickly forward, and suddenly Sherlock was no longer in the dark and dank husk of a long dead Captain’s cabin, but on Prince Eric’s ship, being held up from the arm strongly by the blonde haired human. Sherlock stared widely, unable to move or speak, and the human smiled with an amused huff, reaching out with his other hand to smooth it up Sherlock’s cheek and into his hair, brushing it behind his ear. The human’s fingers were thick and warm and wonderful callused, and Sherlock found himself leaning into the touch, swaying forward and reaching out. A cool and fresh breeze billowed out the sails suddenly and danced across Sherlock’s skin, and it was only then that he realised he had legs and not a tail. They were long, lean and pale, and he wriggled his toes and beamed, watching the way the bones and tendons under the skin raised and fluttered at his command. 

“I know his name,” Jim said with a cruel sneer, and Sherlock twitched his head up to find that he was right back where he was before, blinking against the abrupt darkness. “Do you want to know it? Do you want to see him again? – I know you do. It hurts, doesn’t it? To know that was probably the last time you’ll see him. But it doesn’t have to hurt, Sherlock. Let me fix it. Let me make you a… deal.”

Sherlock could still feel the ghosting of the human’s hand and touched his cheek with a deep furrow of his brows, “I…”

Jim’s fingers crawled up to rest coldly on Sherlock’s shoulder, “I’m doing this because I like you, because you’re different – Normally I wouldn’t show myself to anyone, no one knows me, no one sees me, but you…you’re special. You’re getting in the way and though it’s fun and all, you are still ruining one of my little games! And I can’t have that, now can I?”

Jim moved back a millimetre and muddy black torrents of water swirled and twisted from around his body, like tentacles, waving and weaving in and out of each other. Sherlock didn’t know if Jim was jesting with him with the show, or exposing more of his true self. With a deafening click of Jim’s fingers, there was a flash of bright gold light and a gush of bubbles, before a glowing, golden scroll was floating off to the side of Jim’s right shoulder, above his upturned hand. The light hurt Sherlock’s eyes as it lit up almost the entire cabin, throwing dark, sharp shadows over Jim’s face as he stared at Sherlock excitedly, and Sherlock peered at it with a grimace, shielding his face. 

“To get anything done, you first must obtain power. With power, comes control and obedience and influence,” Jim told him and bent lithely into Sherlock’s personal space again. “And before you ask why I don’t just do what I want Ursula to do myself; it would be boring! Why should I? Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the game? Why do it myself when I can have someone do it for me? When I can control and regulate and connect with a whole tangle of creatures that are just as pathetic and needy as each other? I manipulate those that manipulate others. Neat, huh?—I don’t care what Ursula ultimately wants. It means nothing to me. It’s worthless. It’s boring. It’s cliché! What I want is not to be bored! Is to play! I want to oversee all the dirty little deeds that individuals wish to carry out. I want to watch them struggle and writhe, like a fish caught in a net!”

Sherlock glared and lowered his hand when the scroll unravelled and floated close enough for Sherlock to take it in his fingers. It was warm to the touch and pulsed with golden light, and written upon it were symbols and writing that Sherlock did not understand; human writing, or some form of it. It looked ancient and the sentences buzzed at him from the magical paper. A white, shimmering skeleton quill of a fish popped into existence nearby and Sherlock frowned at it and looked up over the curled top of the scroll to eye Jim intensely.

“I haven’t agreed to anything,” Sherlock told him impassively, trying not to give away how much his heart thundered and ached to agree to it. “Why would I sign this? Surely you can’t expect me to sign it? I know nothing of—”

“I want your heart,” Jim talked over the top of Sherlock, cutting off his sentence, and the words on the scroll rippled and shifted, becoming words that actually meant something to Sherlock. 

Sherlock let the scroll go and moved a little further back, “My heart?”

“Not physically, obviously,” Jim scoffed, rolling his eyes, before he continued with a sharp grin and clenched one hand before Sherlock’s chest; magically illuminating Sherlock’s rapidly beating heart beneath his skin with glowing outlines. “I want to burn the heart out of you. Sort of. – You will be incapable of love.”

“That’s all?” Sherlock snorted. “I give you my heart, and I get to be human?”

“Well, not exactly,” Jim sighed with a sneaky sort of look. “Your heart will belong to me, for all eternity. You will be incapable of love, and therefore others will be incapable of loving you,” Jim told him with a wave of his hand, pulling a vial of dark, cerulean, swirling liquid from seemingly nowhere. “All you have to do is drink this—Once you sign, of course.”

Sherlock narrowed his gaze on the scroll and then the vial, “And if I refuse?”

“Why would you refuse?” Jim cackled and the skeleton quill floated closer with every throb of light from the scroll. “You don’t care about Ariel. You don’t care about the sea. You don’t care about Ursula’s intentions, nor how this all fits together and pans out. You only care about being human. About being with a human. – And so you should!—Without this potion, you will never get another chance to be human. Without making this deal, you will be doomed to remain a merman forever, doomed to collecting broken scraps left by the dead from their little sunken ships and decomposed bodies. Do you really want that? Wouldn’t you be happier, wouldn’t you be better, up there? Surrounded by the humans and their human things?”

With a small frown Sherlock looked away, only to look back and outstretch his right hand for the quill. It was sharp and faintly vibrating between his fingers. Sherlock stared at it and then turned to gaze at the scroll again, as Jim cocked his head aside and watched him with a steady and gleaming stare, his smile looking too big for his face.

Sherlock’s mind raced, buzzing and shaken, and he tried to forget the hallucination Jim had crafted, but it was hard to push aside the face of the blonde haired human. Sherlock’s thoughts were alive with images of the human’s eyes, smile, skin, hair, and hands, and Sherlock could barely concentrate. It made no sense why he would be so captivated with the human after only one happenstance, he was not Ariel, he was not in love; yet there was something there, something about the human that Sherlock couldn’t shake, couldn’t ignore. The moment their eyes had met, it felt like everything in Sherlock’s life had been pushing him to that very point, to that very ship, just to see and meet that human, if only for a couple of seconds. Though, perhaps it should be more? Perhaps there was a reason they had met? Sherlock didn’t believe in destiny, but he could not overlook that he felt some sort of pull toward the human. It tugged at the very core of him, made him itch and antsy to see more, to know more.

“Is this part of the same game?” Sherlock murmured absentmindedly, eyes on the scroll as it flowed closer. “Or a new one?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jim said, and the shift of shadows across his face made his features pointy and intimidating. He looked untrustworthy and malevolent, but what he offered was written on gold, and was probably the only way to get what Sherlock eagerly wanted.

Sherlock thought of his brother, of his father, of his mother, and fiddled with the quill to hide the tremor in his hand. All it would take would be a signature. All he had to do was sign and drink the potion, and he’d be free. Sherlock could do without a heart, without love, it was a pitiable notion and meant only weakness, as almost all emotions did. Sentiment was not strength. It did nothing but bring misery. Something Ariel was bound to experience sooner rather than later. 

Sherlock extended the quill to the scroll but paused an inch or two away from it, staring into the middle distance and then over at Jim with deliberation as Jim swayed in place and waited, and watched, and grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim is so cray-cray!
> 
> Is he speaking in riddles? Is he playing multiple games? Or is he just stating the facts and offering Sherlock an innocent contract to grant his eager wish?
> 
> Even I don't know anymore...
> 
>  
> 
> Also, I know, I know, I was overly cliché by using references/quotes from the Sherlock series. I'm sorry, okay?


	8. Daring

It seemed as though everything that made Sherlock who he was, was screaming at him to do it, to sign and to drink, and to be something other than the stranded merman that he currently was, but Sherlock’s heart only beat harder and faster in suspicion and apprehension, thumping strongly beneath his ribcage until a churning of dread birthed in his gut. Sherlock’s eyes were sore from lack of sleep and the glare off the scroll, but he kept them open and staring, giving nothing away as he regarded Jim with what he hoped to be an impassive expression. However, Jim’s face shuttered and twitched, morphing vulgarly in the abrasive clash of light and shadow until he looked like nothing more than a monster.

“Your words are double-edged,” Sherlock murmured flatly and pressed his fingers down on the quill. 

Jim’s head sloped aside, “Are they?” he questioned lightly, the glinting in his amused eyes only making Sherlock increase the tightness of his hold on the quill. “How so?”

“You speak half-truths, speak as if you have all the answers before you’ve heard the questions,” Sherlock said and tried not to react when his arm began to shake. “You haven’t really lied to me, but you’ve not told the whole truth either. You say one thing, but that one thing could have a million and one meanings to it, and perhaps even more on the number of outcomes…”

“I think you’re overthinking,” Jim sang derisively and swished suddenly to Sherlock’s side, pressing bodily to him and grabbing his wrist in a cold and steely grasp that reminded Sherlock of the time he’d been caught in some kelp as a merboy. “This is what you want. Isn’t it? You want to be human. This is the way you can achieve it. Such a feat is not easily come by, you know. Not everyone has the power or the drive or the mind to give in to you, and with such an easy and fair price—Sign the contract now. Sign it and become human, before I change my mind!”

Jim’s body felt hard and cool, and as Sherlock tried to wrap his mind around Jim’s words and the many implications of them, Jim stretched to put his face so close to the side of Sherlock’s, that he felt the faint brush from the end of Jim’s nose along his cheekbone. Everything about Jim was abnormal and portentous and unnatural; the words he said, the smiles he gave, the look in his eyes, the tightening of his grip, and even the sensation of the merman’s skin and scales against Sherlock’s own. Everything about Jim seemed wrong, and pulsated with something wicked; yet Sherlock still felt himself curious, felt his blood sing with the need to know and investigate, to grapple for what he most wanted. Sherlock was indeed bored of his life under the sea, had been for years. Sherlock wanted something more, something better. Sherlock wanted to be on land, wanted to know more about the humans; and what better way to see and know more, but to walk amongst them himself?

However, the price seemed questionable to Sherlock. He tried to think of all the ways Jim could twist the words he had said, how he could take advantage and use Sherlock once he signed the contract, but there were so many outcomes, so many theories, and he didn’t have enough information at his disposal to pinpoint what exactly Jim was after and which outcome, which meaning, was the one that Jim was most interested in. Jim liked games; so far, so obvious, but Sherlock still didn’t know what else Jim got from it all, other than the entertainment value. He was evidently insane, though the merman was still immensely intelligent, and so Sherlock was having a hard time properly understanding his twisted mind-set and goals. Sherlock also wanted to know about what things were apparently out of alignment because of his involvement with Ariel. Jim didn’t seem like he had plans personally, but rather that he knew of plans and wanted to see them unfold for his own amusement, to see how things played out; or perhaps Sherlock had been right the first time, and everything was a part of one huge game, one vast, interlaced scheme and distraction. Sherlock wasn’t completely sure if Jim had any influence over Ursula, or what exactly Ursula was to Jim, if she were a mere puppet or something more, something less; and Sherlock didn’t think he’d end up finding out if he took the contract that Jim was offering.

Sherlock strained away from him with a snarl, “You do not know me. You claim to know me, tell me what I should and should not be thinking or feeling, but you are wrong!” he exclaimed, and in a burst of adrenaline and courage Sherlock threw the quill at Jim. “I will not adhere to your will, to your words! I refuse the contract, the vial, and you!”

A jittery kind of stillness descended after Sherlock’s outburst, and Jim slowly waved the scroll, vial and quill to one side, drifting toward Sherlock again, silent as death. Sherlock felt a shudder go up his spine but remained facing Jim, leaving his hands uncurled and unthreatening at his sides. Jim took his time closing the distance between them once more, and then circled Sherlock when he was within a few tail flips of him, as he had done before; the muddy tentacle-like torrents of water breaking and smearing up Sherlock’s scales and skin, they left an ice-cold chill behind them, and wherever they touched looked tarnished and almost bruised once they moved away.

“Interesting,” Jim said at last and beamed a smile that Sherlock couldn’t help but flinch at. “Foolish, but interesting – Very well! You can go.” He winked, clicked his fingers again, and everything disappeared; the scroll; the quill; the vial; and his odd, dark phantom limbs.

In the sudden gloom from the wake of the golden light, Sherlock tried desperately to keep tabs on Jim. Every faint sound or movement put Sherlock on edge, more than he had been before, and Sherlock wondered if he should arm himself or perhaps to escape while he had the chance to do so, as obviously he could not stay there as he had hoped he might do, not with Jim there, it wasn’t safe. Once the darkness had ebbed enough for Sherlock to see again, it revealed the white gleam of Jim’s teeth. Jim was right in front of him, inches away, almost bumping noses with him; his eyes eerily wide and staring. 

Sherlock swam back and aside, reaching instinctively for his bag, “That’s… it?” he asked, and cursed himself almost immediately for questioning the abrupt ending to their meeting. Sherlock knew he shouldn’t dwell on Jim’s sudden change of mood, but because the merman had spent such a long time trying to convince Sherlock to give up his heart, it was highly dubious. Not only that, but Jim had repeatedly said he didn’t like Sherlock being in his way, ruining his game, so surely he wouldn’t just let him go? Was it another game?

“You are free to go,” Jim replied excessively jovial without answering the question, and he motioned vaguely with one hand, shooing Sherlock away without actually moving apart to allow him the space to leave.

Sceptical, Sherlock moved slowly to the cabin entryway as Jim laughed with a vibrating of his shoulders and coiled tail, drifting to the floor with his arms bent and tensed. He looked ready to pounce, and so Sherlock changed course, swimming to the broken window instead with a feeling of trepidation at the look of Jim’s features, knowing he had more of a chance to escape, would have more freedom to swim, if he went out the window and into the open water. Slipping through carefully, Sherlock looked back just in time to see Jim twitch creepily and surge toward him with his arms and fingers outstretched, teeth suddenly sharp and long, and his eyes glowing.

“I’m so changeable!” He cackled, voice two-toned and shrill and loud and foreboding, as he snatched at Sherlock’s fins with clawed hands and pushed through the distorted frames of the window, coursing up and out; fast approaching Sherlock with wicked amusement. “Does your flesh taste as good as it looks, pretty fish?—You’re the first to refuse me, Sherlock! The first in such a long, long time! It’s thrilling! Exciting! But I can’t just let you go without at least trying to kill you first! It’s a matter of pride! Of equality! Of fun!—I’m going to skin you and wear your innocent little face!”

Sherlock looked around frantically, unused to the location, especially in the dark, and arced over a snapped and angled mast flexibly, swimming through a porthole and out of the rotten bowels of ship after ship. He was exhausted but wired at the same time, and glanced around rapidly, trying to find his way out of the crowding, serrated, hazardous planks of putrid wood to reach the upper levels of the ship graveyard. Jim was almost upon him as he took a sharp left, and Sherlock looked back briefly to be met with something that scarcely resembled the merman he’d seen in the cabin any longer; Jim seemed to be blurred and twitching, as if constantly shifting shape, and surrounded in black swirls that obscured his face at random intervals. A face that was pale and gaunt and sharp and split in half with a wide toothy smile.

Dipping and zooming through another ship, Sherlock suddenly recognised where he was and grinned, swimming off to the right and further up. He was a few yards away from the ship he had recently taken Ariel to earlier and as he debated whether or not it would be wise to return to the Kingdom, or possibly chance the surface, he remembered the sword he’d dropped, with it’s encrusted handle and rusty but sharp blade; and only just missed being slashed at by Jim’s clawed hands as he lithely turned around and swam back into the damaged ship.

Sherlock knew it was a dangerous idea and definitely not a particularly smart one at that; nevertheless he wasn’t entirely comfortable about leading the deranged merman into the Kingdom, and it was perhaps a better idea than to risk breaking the surface when he knew so little about it at present. He had no other idea in such a frantic moment, other than to find a way to stay alive and not let Jim get to him, and defending himself with an interesting and threatening sort of object from the human world, was better than allowing himself to be chased until he ultimately tired. In addiction, Sherlock wanted the sword, and was interested and eager to hold it again after mindlessly letting it fall from his fingers the first time. He had been stupid to drop it; though he distantly tried to picture himself using it against the shark instead and could not do so, not when the shark had been so fast and so vicious. So then, why did he think it would work with Jim, who was just as fast, and seemed ten times as vicious? What was a sword against a magic, disturbed merman?

Since the shark attack, the ship was even more hazardous, and was crumbling and creaking as Sherlock slithered in quickly but carefully, making his way to where he’d let it go, only to find it gone. Sherlock froze and then twisted, shifting around anxiously until his attention caught on the fact that the ship had recently shifted its angle, and had tilted sideways, possibly due to the previous tussle. He looked down on the wooden, cracked floorboards and scanned it with his eyes before he smiled at the glint of jewels from a dark shadow in the corner where the sword had obviously slid.

“Hiding are we?” Jim said in another singsong sort of tone as he bashed through one of the holes left by the shark. He paused momentarily to eye it and then grinned widely, turning to stare at Sherlock as Sherlock dived for the sword and held it out before him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know...It seemed like a good sort of idea at that time to make him go back for the sword...  
> I really don't think Sherlock would have brought Jim into the Kingdom, not that Jim doesn't know where it is, he probably does, but just because Sherlock can't really work out what Jim would do if he did lead him to the Kingdom...if that makes sense? I hope it does. Obviously Triton might be able to help, but I don't see Sherlock doing that. It would be like Sherlock actually waiting for backup from Lestrade, it's just not him. He just dives in (heh) head first into things.  
> Sherlock was debating the surface, because he'd probably be able to lose Jim if he went on land, but it's risky for Sherlock, in many ways.   
> Therefore, getting the sword to sort of defend himself was the best thing...right?
> 
> And I'm not sure if it comes across, but this is sort of like the swimming pool scene in the series? It's just twisted. Jim has offered Sherlock a tricky sort of contract. Sherlock declined. So Jim let him go, but then changed his mind. So the sword is like the gun Sherlock had in that swimming pool scene.
> 
> Also, I'm getting right into the halloween spirit and it seems to be showing through in my writing. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.


	9. Addict

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. Writer's block sucks. Real life also sucks.

Jim took in Sherlock’s posture and then focused on the edge of the blade with amusement, suddenly looking normal again in a blink of an eye, “You would use that against me, would you?” he snorted as he kept his distance. “You think you would be fast enough, strong enough, to hurt me with that? Or perhaps you wish to…kill me? Do you really think you’d be able to, that I’d let you?” Jim’s amusement heightened with each word uttered and he snapped his dark eyes to Sherlock’s, spreading out his arms in a playfully submissive gesture.

Keeping a steady grip on the sword, Sherlock lifted his chin and glared, flitting his eyes quickly over Jim, “Strange that you don’t try and pry it from my hands? Perhaps I would be able to kill you?”

“You’re not a killer,” Jim murmured in retort, his head cocked to one side as he dropped his arms and imperceptibly drew nearer. 

“No? Then why have you hesitated? Why not get me now? Rip the flesh from my bones and wear my face, like you crowed about doing not a few moments ago?” Sherlock spat as he tracked Jim’s movements with a keen eye, able to see much clearer with being closer to the surface and not as well confined. Sherlock felt his own mouth quirk and pull up into a taunting and jeering smile that could have matched the many Jim had previously sent his way, and watched as it was then perfectly mirrored on Jim’s face in riposte. Jim’s irises seemed darker; his eyes like those of a shark, as he bared his teeth and cocked his head to the other side. 

“I’d be so surprised if you did kill me, Sherlock; really I would. And just a teensy bit disappointed,” Jim said, completely unperturbed. 

Sherlock responded by arching his eyebrow and adjusted how he held the sword, becoming quickly accustomed to its weight, and balancing it between his hands as he shifted sideways, swimming in the opposite direction to how Jim was discreetly trying to edge closer to Sherlock. Sherlock didn’t exactly know what he needed to do to be rid of the merman, but tried hurriedly to come up with a multiple of options anyway. He felt like he had more freedom to do so in his current position, as opposed to the position he had been in earlier, although it still did nothing to help his situation. Jim was not finished with him, not if the look in his eyes was anything to go by, and Sherlock knew that he would not be allowed to leave until Jim had fully decided on a course of action. 

He still did not know if it was wise to risk a swim back to the kingdom once more. Would Jim still follow him? It was highly probable. Being armed with a human object would not go over well with the King if he were spotted before he had the chance to explain why he had it and just who it was that was chasing him, and Sherlock wasn’t sure if Triton would be able to stop Jim if his attention were to be taken, foolishly, by Sherlock. In the time Sherlock had come to know Jim, he knew that it was never a good thing to be distracted or side-tracked by him. Jim was sneaky and wicked, who adored playing a various games all at once, none of which were easily apparent.

Sherlock gritted his teeth and tried to take in his surroundings again without moving his focus from Jim, fearing that any sort of lack of that focus would see Jim upon him. A vision of Jim attacking him and hounding him to the ship floor only to bite a chunk from Sherlock’s throat, flashed through his mind, unstoppable and overly grotesque, and Sherlock clenched his jaw as his imagination ran away with itself. 

They circled one another in thick silence, both grinning and curious and somewhat eager to see what the other would do. Jim stared at Sherlock unblinkingly and Sherlock forced his own eyes to remain open just as wide, noticing that Jim, although still seeming as deranged as before, seemed to be debating and contemplating something, and Sherlock wondered once again if it had all been another game, a test. Surely if Jim truly wanted to kill Sherlock he would have done so already, or perhaps his so-called powers only did so much? Were they just a show, another sort of hallucination to scare Sherlock and distract him from what Jim actually wanted and was doing all along? Sherlock blinked rapidly in perplexity before he could stop himself and Jim sprang into action, seizing the sword and Sherlock’s hands around it in one motion, bending and pushing it aside as he leaned close to laugh in Sherlock’s face.

“Sorry,” Jim purred and pushed Sherlock up against a nearby wooden wall, his eeriness still present in the way his eyes gleamed and his teeth, which became sharper, filled his mouth in an outrageous display of savagery. “Wrong day to die.”

“Oh?” Sherlock hissed through the pain of his wrists as Jim twisted them strongly. “Got a better offer for me I suppose?”

Jim inclined his head and then let Sherlock go all at once, swimming back and looking normal and unassuming again, “Yes,” he crooned. “You see, I really would like to see my little game play out and I’ve figured out how that can benefit you as well as me.”

Levelling the sword to Jim again, Sherlock motioned with his head in intrigue, “Oh yes?”

“It’s such a weakness of mine, to change my mind at the burst of a bubble, but to be fair to myself, it is my only weakness,” Jim said, seemingly talking more to himself than to Sherlock as he spread his arms and swam in a gentle and slow spiral. “My little game, as you’ve rightly deduced, obviously, at some point, has Ariel visit that pesky, naughty sea witch we spoke about. – And that which you strongly refused from me, Ariel will gladly accept from Ursula. Why? Because she’s stupid!”

Sherlock lowered the sword at Jim’s echoing, distasteful laugh, and moved away when Jim swayed toward him, “And how exactly does that benefit me?” Sherlock asked. “That’s if I allow her to be conned into doing something so foolish—”

“Because,” Jim exclaimed loudly, cutting Sherlock off just before he’d finished his sentence, “her decision is your ticket to the human world.” 

“I don’t see how?” Sherlock scoffed, pointing the end of the sword at Jim when his face contorted and he snarled, obviously annoyed with Sherlock’s response. 

“Must I spell out everything?” He shouted in a growl. “I thought you weren’t like all the others—Her request will be granted by Ursula, her desire to be “part of their world” will finally be fulfilled...”

“She’ll be turned human,” Sherlock mumbled with a nod and flinched when Jim rushed close again to praise Sherlock condescendingly, but Sherlock interrupted him before he could say anything. “And, what? I’ll also be turned human alongside her?”

Jim touched the tip of the sword with one finger, pressing down until the skin broke, and grinned, “Yes – Although it won’t be by Ursula, in fact, you won’t be anywhere near Ariel when you turn. It best you not be, for obvious reasons,” he said, watching as his blood misted out from the nick on his fingertip in a bloom of dark crimson. “If you will not sign my contract; if you refuse to put yourself, or at least part of yourself, on the line for one of the strongest and biggest desires you’ve longed and craved for since you can remember, then why not play it safe and surge in another’s wake, exerting less effort on your part?—If you successfully turn Ariel into the welcoming tentacles of Ursula, then I shall turn you into a human without you needing to pay any sort of price for it. It will be, free of charge.”

Sherlock perked up slowly with interest, “For such a “little game,” you badly want it to go unerringly to plan,” he said with a bent smirk as he swam a few strokes around Jim in thought. “Why would I agree to that? Why would I agree to anything that you have to say? You don’t exactly fill me with confidence – you could be scheming something more foul—”

“How else will you get legs?” Jim snapped with one clawed looking hand. “You have two options; Ursula and me.”

“Either way I’m dealing with you,” Sherlock argued and twisted his fingers around the handle of the sword awkwardly. “I can’t possibly agree to what you are suggesting. Not without knowing what, why and how Ariel being transformed into a human aids Ursula and your game.—There’s a bigger picture to all this. Ursula has nothing against Ariel personally; it’s all about Triton. Ariel’s choice to go to Ursula, to become human, fits into Ursula’s plan to undo Triton, to get her revenge. It’s as you said, cliché and dull, but that’s what it is, isn’t it? And the outcome of her revenge is enough to entertain you; so what is the outcome, what do you get out of it all and what happens?”

Jim rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively, “What does that matter to you? You’ll be human. Free of Triton and the borders of the sea.” Jim said and then pulled another vial like before into existence. “You’re not going to turn this down. You have no reason to. Nothing that happens to either Ariel or Triton will affect you.”

“Of course it will!—” Sherlock countered.

“Sherlock,” Jim said in a singsong tone, his expression dark. “I’m slowly losing my patience with you.—There is no need for this charade, Sherlock. It’s just you, and me. No one else. – Now, come here.”

Sherlock turned away from Jim a little in wariness, “Why give it to me now? I haven’t yet done as you’ve asked.”

“But you will,” Jim said, before he sighed with another roll of his eyes and motioned to the vial. “This mixture is different. This is just to…tide you over until you’ve done your duty. Think of it as a sort of taste of what’s to come once you succeed. A treat if you will. For being such a good merboy.” 

Sherlock only realised he’d let his guard down too much when Jim slapped the sword out of his hands and grabbed him by the wrist with one of the murky, billowing tentacle like appendages, “What will it do?” he demanded as he fought the tentacle, amazed how it could be both solid and liquid at the same time.

Jim grinned at him and suddenly held an odd looking object in the hand not holding the vial that made Sherlock’s blood run cold. Jim turned to face Sherlock to watch him better with yet another smile that seemed too large for his thin face, and brought the syringe with a five-inch needle closer. It glinted when Jim attached it to the vial and wielded it with fierce intention into Sherlock’s direction, stretching out Sherlock’s captured arm with a high-pitched cackle.

“Stop! Wait, I did not agree to what you’re suggesting!” Sherlock said through his thrashing.

Jim paused and looked up into Sherlock’s face, the needle a few inches away from Sherlock’s skin, “You’re really going to give this up? This is your only chance, Sherlock. Your only way—And this little concoction is nothing to fear. I told you, it’s a treat. You’ve been good, Sherlock, more than I could have ever imagined. So, so good. So interesting. So…different.”

Sherlock increased his struggling to get free with a scowl, “What does it do?”

With a huff of enjoyment, Jim waited until Sherlock stilled before he answered, “I’m granting one teeny, tiny piece of your wish – To read the human written language.”

Blinking, Sherlock looked down at the vial, “You—That potion will truly—?”

“Yes,” Jim grinned and although Sherlock still did not fully trust him, the urge to be granted such a thing overwrote almost all sensible thought, just like it briefly had when Jim had offered Sherlock legs. 

Sherlock rationalised that Jim still needed Sherlock to correct what he had misaligned, and without a contract between them then it meant neither was bound to the other; something that was both immensely good and terribly bad. 

After a while, Sherlock relaxed his arm and hand, still in debate, but ultimately thought that such a deal was better than the pervious; and without a contract, Jim, like the many other sea witches, was in the position of powerlessness. There was always a cost, after all. There was always something taken for something given. An exchange, a contract, had to be crafted before anything could be done, but Jim was offering Sherlock’s desire freely; with the only exception that Sherlock fix what he had broken, and to entice him further to do his request, Jim was going to gift Sherlock the power to read human words.

“Why must it be given to me like… that, when the other potion was to merely be drank?” Sherlock asked Jim suspiciously; though he had a notion that Jim had only provided it in such a way to entertain his sadistic cravings and nothing more. Jim seemed to want pain mixed with pleasure he gave and wanted to grant what people longed for alongside a hint of merciless pain. 

Jim looked as though he’d read Sherlock’s mind, and peered under his brow at him meaningfully, “So, do you agree?”

Sherlock glanced into Jim’s eyes silently and inclined his head in a short and brisk nod in answer, pressing his brows and lips together, and already berating himself for giving in. Jim pierced the delicate skin at the inside of his elbow instantly and injected the dark liquid with a snigger, twanging the needle stuck in Sherlock’s arm in contentment and creating small jolts of harsh discomfort that made Sherlock’s fingers twitch.

With a gasp, Sherlock tensed and shuddered as the potion surged through his veins, flaring with an intense euphoria through his entire body and bringing everything into sudden and vivid sharp focus. A ringing in his ears began moments after insertion and Sherlock looked down when the last of it was plunged into his body. He watched, hypnotised, as it glowed from under his skin, shooting up his arm, across his chest, into his heart and then suddenly exploding everywhere at once with the fast pulses of his heartbeat. 

Sherlock’s eyes rolled automatically as it throbbed into and through his mind, and Sherlock grinned with instinctive enchantment, arching his head back with a curve of his tail. It felt brilliant and addicting instantaneously, but as soon as it ebbed, the euphoria passing, Sherlock wanted more; and wanted to take everything he had said before back and sign the contract, to seal the deal, without a moments hesitation.

Jim was watching him intently, and when Sherlock turned to him after fighting the impulses to beg Jim to instead grant his wish to be human after all, Jim motioned to the sword on the floor, “There’s an inscription on the blade. Have a read.”

Bending lithely to pick it back up, Sherlock lifted it and turned it, squinting at the rust covered steel. When he located the engraving the words there were faded but illegible and Sherlock ran his gaze over them repeatedly with a burning of happiness that throbbed in his chest and buzzed through his extremities. He laughed, dizzy with the knowledge, and Jim swam into his view, pushing the sword down slightly.

“What you’re feeling right now? It would have been increased ten fold if you had agreed to my first deal,” Jim told him, a mixture of disappointment and self-satisfaction etched into his face as he ran his hands up Sherlock’s arms to grasp his shoulders, his features breaking out into a gleeful expression when Sherlock suddenly lifted his eyes from the writing on the sword with a small frown.

“I…don’t understand some of these words,” Sherlock mumbled. “I can read them, but I don’t know what they mean.”

“But of course,” Jim sighed and cupped Sherlock’s face, his hands gentle at first, before his fingers dug into Sherlock’s cheeks, sharply pointed. “I didn’t say you would understand the words, sweetheart, just that you’d be able to read them.”

Jim giggled madly when Sherlock glowered, “What use is it if I cannot understand what they mean?” Sherlock snarled, but calmed again quickly and pursed his lips, knowing that it was his own fault for not paying more attention to the words Jim had spoken beforehand. “What else will—?”

“It won’t last,” Jim told him impishly. “It will run out. It’s not permanent. Just a little taste, a little treat—After you put my little game back on track again, then you can have everything. Although, some words will still not have meaning, not until you learn them – Something I’m sure you’d love to do once you’re human, I’d wager.”

“How exactly am I to fix what you say I ruined?” Sherlock asked after several seconds. “I cannot very well go up to Ariel and tell her to visit the sea witch so offhandedly, she’d think I’d lost my senses.”

Jim smoothed his hands down Sherlock’s neck idly and cooed, “You’re a smart merman. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Sherlock pushed Jim away, “How precisely have I ruined it? Did I do something? Say something? How is it any different with me in the picture?—Before meeting you, I had no interest or idea about Ariel’s future, nor the future of the Kingdom. I don’t see how I changed the course of her life and your game so easily…”

Jim gave him a dismissive gesture. “You complicate things. Lengthen the process. I am not patient, Sherlock. And I do detest a change in plans.”

“So, you wanted me out of the way first, but after finding out I could not be so straightforwardly swayed, you chose to come at it from a different angle,” Sherlock said as he swam to one of the many shark made openings in the ship, sliding the sword into his bag slowly.

Laughing manically without replying to Sherlock’s words, Jim floated in the shadows and allowed Sherlock to slip out without moving to stop him, “Bye, Sherlock!” he exclaimed. “See you soon…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't entirely sure if what I had written would make sense to others. It makes sense to me, in a sick and twisted and odd way.
> 
> Personally, I thought Sherlock would not sign a contract as easily as some (sorry again Ariel), but Jim would not give up and so would play game after game to find out more about Sherlock for entertainment purposes and to get his way -- or to kill him after messing with him, because why not. 
> 
> I know it might seem weird to have Sherlock refuse to be human but accept to be able to read written language, but hear me out: with the contract, that's binding. He cannot go back and he would probably lose more than he would gain, judging from the type of person/creature Jim is and the implications to the price Sherlock would have had to pay to have legs. Also, Sherlock could still learn how to read the writing through the potion, so when it wore off, Sherlock would still make sure to contain some knowledge of the written language, meaning that if he so chose, he could backstab Jim and at least come out of it all with something he'd desired at the end of it. Yes, it's not legs, it's not him being human, but it's something, something that he's wished for just as much when looting sunken ships. Sherlock is mostly interested in knowledge and all that at present. Being human was a way to know about humans, for example. Being human would have allowed him to indulge in understanding and solving and knowing, and would let him visit all the places that water does not touch.
> 
> At this point in the story, Jim is looking somewhat desperate. If he cannot get Sherlock out of the way by turning him human, then perhaps he can use Sherlock, perhaps he can convince him to make things right again ( which basically means putting the plot of the film back into gear, because with Sherlock in there, things would not turn out the same and might even go into different directions, directions that would lengthen or possibly put an end to Ursula's plans, which in turn upsets Jim who wants to see these plans in action -- either for shits and giggles or for his own means, who knows...)  
> Anyway, to me it makes sense that Sherlock would agree to it. Sure he still doesn't trust Jim, and Jim could turn things around on him, but here, Jim needs him and is not really interested in killing Sherlock (yet) because of how much he interests him. Think of a cat playing with a mouse or a bird, the cat could easily put an end to the mouse and/or bird's life, but then they'd not have anything to play with would they?
> 
> Jim is insane too, so, keep that in mind. His thoughts seem to constantly shift and change, so things might have meaning, or they just might be random. When I write him, I write with a goal in mind, that then changes with each reaction of Sherlock's, because it's fascinating to Jim to watch Sherlock squirm.
> 
> Oh God, none of that made sense did it?
> 
> Sorry...


	10. In Love

Sherlock swam off at speed and glanced over his shoulder cautiously as he dipped down and through the ribs of one smaller boat, zipping in and out of the curved wooden framework as he made toward the Kingdom in a longwinded and winding way, hoping that Jim was not following him; although he still thought that Jim knew his way without Sherlock’s help. Sherlock peeked up at the surface as he swam away from the disconsolate graveyard of ships, and writhed through waving gardens of seaweed and huge gatherings of fish mechanically, knowing the routes he took like the back of his hand. 

It was almost dawn, the rosy light of the early morning filtering through to flicker and caress Sherlock’s body in pools and stripes of pale pink and orange; it drew his gaze to the bruises still littering his arms and he touched them with one hand, thinking of the human and of the deal that Jim had offered; both of them. Had he been stupid to refuse the first deal, only to give in to the second? Was he under Jim’s thumb no matter what he did? Sherlock sighed and gritted his teeth, shaking his head with a scowl as he forced himself onward faster and stronger, ignoring his obvious need to slow and rest and eat. It had been hours since Sherlock had had a decent sleep, as well as a nutritious meal.

The mark on the inside of his elbow throbbed when he glanced at it, and Sherlock stroked it and tilted his head, looking back over his shoulder. Sherlock felt his stomach turn upside down at the thought of what he had just done, and he tried again to think of other reasons to explain why and if Jim had truly changed his mind. Perhaps what he had done was what he had wanted to do all along? Had a small part of Jim known Sherlock would refuse the first arrangement? The vial had looked awfully similar, both times. Sherlock scratched at the needle mark absentmindedly and frowned, annoyed that he felt like he was always several steps behind Jim. Sherlock hated guessing; Sherlock needed facts, and with Jim, there just weren’t any valuable specifics to decipher what the mad merman wanted with Sherlock and Ariel and Ursula. Sherlock was going to always second-guess himself and Jim, because no sensible, logical reason was attached to any of it.

When the Kingdom finally came into view Sherlock slowed and then hesitated until the sunrays had lost their pinkish hue before he decided to sneak into Ariel’s room like he had done many times previously. He took the path he had always taken and hefted his bag, slipping his gaze sideways when it jingled and caught the attention of a nearby guard; but Sherlock was lithe and skilled, and he moved into a shadow of a pillar until the guard swam past.

Sherlock scratched at his elbow again as he pushed onward and upward, following the extension of a tower to the familiar oval shape of Ariel’s window. He judged the time by the light from the surface and frowned when he found Ariel’s room empty.

“Ariel, dear, time to come out,” called a soft voice that Sherlock instantly recognised as Andrina, one of Ariel’s sisters. “You’ve been in there all morning.”

Bending nimbly, Sherlock swam into the direction he had heard the voice and peered through to where all the sisters were gathered just in time to see Ariel glide out through some seaweed, singing to herself dreamily. 

“What is with her lately?” Atina mused aloud, and Sherlock looked on, unimpressed, as Ariel sat before a mirror, mussed her hair in front of her bemused sisters, and then picked up a flower before she moved to swim out, only to bump gently into Triton.

“Oh!” Ariel giggled, slipping the flower behind Triton’s ear and into his hair with a smile. “Morning, Daddy.”

Sherlock covered his face with his hand, frustrated with her naïve and foolish behaviour, and turned to follow her out as Ariel swirled and twisted off distractedly, but he paused when Atina spoke again, glancing back down at them all.

“Oh, she’s got it bad,” Atina murmured knowingly as she stared after her youngest sister.

Triton half-turned to his daughter with vague interest, bemused and shocked with Ariel’s attitude after their confrontation a short while ago, “What? What has she got?”

Andrina replied to him as Sherlock winced with a curl of his lip and a roll of his eyes, “Isn’t it obvious, Daddy?” she said, cupping her hands before her chest with a romantic looking expression on her face. “Ariel’s in love.”

Triton frowned slowly and Sherlock moved back, making sure he was out of sight but not out of earshot, “Ariel?” he said slowly, taking the flower from his hair with a narrowed look of disbelief and disfavour. “In love?”

Sherlock knew in that instant that Triton thought Ariel was in love with Sherlock himself, and rolled his eyes again, touching the mark on his arm in acknowledgment to what Jim had said, knowing that he truly had gotten in the way by the way Triton’s face shuttered. Sherlock wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t been in the picture, whom would Triton have to blame then? Would he have been happier knowing Ariel could be in love with a random merman Triton had never met? Was he not even smart enough to wonder why it was that Ariel was suddenly showing symptoms of being in love after all the time she’d spent with Sherlock; did he not realise how odd that was; how could he think it was Sherlock that was the cause when Ariel had shown no interest before?

Sherlock thought of the look on Triton’s face once he found out that it was a human that Ariel was interested in and smirked slowly, swimming up and out, watching the King as he made his way down to his throne room. Sherlock knew that the King would be trying to find out where Sherlock was to question him and glanced around for Sebastian, but when he could not find him he pressed his lips together in thought. He had to make a choice. He could either help Ariel, therefore ruining Jim’s plan and in addition stopping both Ariel and Sherlock from being human, by telling Triton a believable lie and talking Ariel out of her ludicrous love-struck phase; or he could tell Triton about the human Prince Eric, leave Ariel alone to her stupid daydreaming, and watch how things unfurled. 

Knowing the King’s blinding anger, Sherlock already knew that Triton would demand he to prove his words and take him to Ariel if he caught sight of Sherlock, which Sherlock would do, whether he wanted to or not. Sherlock idly drifted in thought as he remembered the statue in Ariel’s cavern that Flounder would no doubt show her, with or without Sherlock present, and his mouth quirked with his near silent laugh. It was almost too easy.

Swimming away Sherlock recounted and revisited all the places that Ariel enjoyed spending time, and found her a few yards or so off from a bed of oyster shells several long moments later. Sebastian was with her and as he neared Sherlock could hear that he was lecturing Ariel about her feelings on the human Prince. Sherlock coasted down nearby and watched silently as he debated what he should do before the King either sent out scouts for him or summoned Sebastian to his side for more information and news on Ariel and her feelings on Sherlock; as Sebastian had obviously been elected to keep an eye on Ariel since the shipwreck fiasco. Sherlock snorted softly and scratched the inside of his elbow once again with a twitch and a glower down at his fingertips.

“Ariel – please,” Sebastian was pleading with a longsuffering sort of tone as he clamped down on Ariel’s tail fin to try and stop her from swimming off in dizzy excitement, but was merely dragged along with her instead. “Will you get your head out of the clouds and back in the water where it belongs?”

“I’ll swim up to his castle,” she began enthusiastically with animated gestures. “Then Flounder will splash around to get his attention, and then we’ll go—”

Sebastian let go of her tail in aggravation, “Down here is your home!” he said sternly, swimming to pop up before her face. “Ariel – listen to me. The human world – it’s a mess. Life under the sea is better than anything they got up there!—”

“You’re not going to actually sing to her, are you? Yes, yes, “life is the bubbles.” Please, you don’t need to drill that into our heads – again – and certainly not with a song,” Sherlock uttered loudly with distain, unable to keep his distaste to himself as he moved out toward them and cut off what Sherlock knew would have been another catchy ditty from the crab. “Her mind is obviously made up. Nothing you say, whether it is in song or in normal conversation, is going to change her mind. She’s not easily swayed—Well, not by much…”

“Sherlock,” Ariel gushed happily, swimming up to him and touching his forearm. “Where have you been?”

Sherlock looked her over and frowned, tugging a flower from her hair and throwing it over his shoulder with a look of provocation as Sebastian turned a glare at him, “Yes, where exactly have you been, Sherlock? Your brother’s been searching high and low for you, and—”

“Obviously he hasn’t been looking hard enough,” Sherlock replied and turned up his nose at the crab with a grin as he looked around, failing to see Flounder. “Ariel, I assume that you want your little…infatuation with the human to be a secret, yes? Or as much as it can be with several others having bared witness to you’re little rescue stunt – This is fairly difficult to do if you twirl around like some lovesick [Helostoma temminckii](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissing_gourami). Picking at flowers and giggling and coming up with utterly idiotic plans.”

Ariel sulked at him and folded her arms gently, “Don’t pretend like you’re any better than me,” she said, causing Sherlock to blink and glance around at her with an arched brow. “You saved a human too, Sherlock. I saw it. If I’m infatuated, then what does that make you?”

“I did not sing to my human,” Sherlock scoffed and mimicked her by folding his arms in a childish manner. “I also do not claim to be in love with a human, after one happenstance—Ariel, you don’t know him. You saw him, you heard him say some rubbish about not being able to find “the one,” and then you saved him because he was overly good-looking. That’s love in your eyes, is it? – How can you be in love with him after such a short time? You didn’t converse with him. You know nothing but his name and status.”

“And what’s your reason for saving the human you did?” Ariel countered with a little huff as she turned to sit down on the curved rock she had been perched upon previously. “You hardly talked to him either. Do you even know his name?”

Sherlock shot her a condescending grin, “Well, my reason certainly wasn’t because I thought myself stupidly in love with him – I mean, love at first glance, Ariel? Really?”

Ariel looked annoyed and oddly hurt, “What’s gotten in to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sherlock sighed, waving a hand through the water and creating an arc of bubbles in his wake. “Common sense?”

Ariel snorted and turned her back to him, “I don’t care what you say, or what you think. I do love him. I know its love.”

“All right. Fine,” Sherlock said and swam around toward her, dropping down beside her as Sebastian watched on with a suspicious but interested expression. “It’s love. So…what are you going to do about it?”

Ariel looked at him from the corner of her eyes, “What?”

“You love him,” Sherlock nodded, “but he’s on land, and you’re in the sea – Even if your silly plan to have Flounder attract his attention actually works, then what? What are you going to do? He’ll see you and see your tail. You think he’ll fall for you as you fell for him? – And let’s say he does. Let’s say, he doesn’t care that you don’t have legs, how are you going to be with him? Will there be a schedule planned? Perhaps he’ll come paddling into the shallows to mingle with you every so often, and you’ll hold each other and gaze into each other’s eyes until the sunsets? All of which you have to organise and do behind your father’s back, I might add. You really think that sort of thing will last?”

When a mixture of stubbornness and sadness crossed her face, Ariel looked down at her hands, “Why are you saying all this?” she mumbled.

Sherlock flitted his gaze over her defeated posture and sighed, “I’m trying to be realistic,” he said and then looked skyward in irritation when Ariel turned to him with a frown. “Surely this has crossed your mind? At least some of it? It must have.”

“Enough,” Sebastian grumbled as he swam in front of both their faces, shooting his narrowed look between Sherlock and Ariel, his expression softening at Ariel’s moping features. “The human world is nothing to want, Ariel. Life really is better under the sea…”

Sherlock opened his mouth to argue but Sebastian lifted his pincer at him, “The seaweed is always greener, in somebody else’s lake,” he sang, much to Sherlock’s displeasure. “You dream about going up there, but that is a big mistake. Just look at the world around you. Right here on the ocean floor. Such wonderful things surround you, what more is you lookin’ for?”

Ariel smiled weakly when a school of yellow fish swam in at the sound of singing and swirled around her and Sherlock both, lifting them both up with the momentum. Sherlock shooed them off with a hiss and a glare as his curls twisted, and the sight made Ariel’s smile widen.

Sebastian slid down onto the rock and continued to sing, “Under the sea. Under the sea,” he sang, and Sherlock adjusted the bag on his shoulder with a look of frustration when both Ariel and he sank back down together awkwardly, their tails interlocked as Sebastian bounced up to land on Ariel’s scales. “Darling it’s better, down where it’s wetter, take it from me. Up on the shore they work all day. Out in the sung they slave away. While we devotin,’ full time to floatin’, under the sea!”

Sebastian launched himself off Ariel’s tail fin and Sherlock turned to swim away with a scowl, covering his ears as Sebastian carried on and moving ahead until Sebastian’s song was only faintly lingering in the background. Looking back over his shoulder, Sherlock sighed and swam side to side in thought. He went back over the words he’d said to Ariel, as well as her reactions, and wondered if what he had said could push her into the direction of the sea witch or not. Had she really not thought about what would happen if she ever did show herself to Prince Eric? How could they be anything if she was a mermaid? The sexual intercourse alone was tricky and unthinkable. 

Sherlock pulled a face of disgust at the thought and then turned sharply around when he spotted Flounder swimming toward him, “Sherlock! Have you seen Ariel? I wanted to show her that statue – You should come with me. You did help move it after all.”

“Just follow the ridiculousness that is Sebastian’s singing,” Sherlock griped with a hand motion behind him to emphasis which direction Flounder should take. “And you can show it her without me. I have other things to be doing.”

“Like what?” Flounder asked with a frown and a tilt of his body.

Sherlock scratched the inside of his elbow, “I fail to see what that has to do with you?” he snapped, pressing his lips together in a tight line.

Flounder’s frown deepened in confusion and then exasperation, “All right. I’ll just—”

“Wait, Ariel has human writing there, doesn’t she,” Sherlock suddenly realised with a flood of elation and a gasp. “I can read them! I can finally see what the humans thought to write about—Well, not everything. Some of it has been washed away and disturbed and ruined by the sea.”

“Huh?” Flounder mumbled, scratching his head with his fin. “What are you talking about?”

Sherlock pushed Flounder toward Ariel’s location, “I’ll meet you there,” he told Flounder distracted with the prospect of reading all he could from Ariel’s collection of human books. He grinned widely as he set off at once toward the cavern, his hands fisted in his excitement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love that Sherlock almost stopped Sebastian from singing one of the best songs in the movie. It made me snort with laughter.


	11. Flotsam and Jetsam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to slip in here that the scene with Sebastian being summoned to Triton would still happen. The only differences being that Triton's tone would not be like it was in the movie. It makes sense that Sebastian think that he knows about Ariel and the prince, because the tone in which Triton questions him will be curt and angry etc as he thinks that Ariel is in love with Sherlock. Because he's an idiot.

Once he reached the cave Sherlock shoved the boulder to the floor in a shower of misted sand and bolted in and up to the lined up collection of books, briefly dodging the statue of Eric with a hard glower and a snarl of distaste. Wearied but eager, he ran his gaze over the thick spines, taking in some of the golden bands that decorated the biggest volumes with a keen eye. Some of them were falling apart and blackened, and he hesitated a moment, fingers mere inches away while he read some of the titles with a swell of giddiness. 

“‘Romeo and Juliet’; ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’; ‘Utopia’; ‘Richard II’; ‘Hamlet’…” Sherlock murmured as he pushed the books aside after scanning their pages, putting them back gently at first and then with more force as annoyance set in the more words he read. “No. No. No! – Boring. Dull. Drivel. Rubbish. Idiotic—The humans can’t be this tedious, surely? Is there nothing interesting to read at all? – I need information. I need context. Is there nothing that explains things here? The history of man; the human anatomy; I’d even settle with an explanation of how they build their ships for crying out loud!”

Sherlock threw one book he was skimming over his shoulder and growled under his breath as he picked up and shifted through the rest of the books available, ripping pages and breaking spines. Had Jim known that Sherlock would find nothing stimulating to read? Was it a trick? Was it more torture for the sick merman’s entertainment? Sherlock scowled deeply and crumpled a torn piece of paper in his hand as he lifted his gaze to the hole in the top of the cave, looking up at the surface with more determination than he had ever felt before. He wanted to visit the human world more than ever with his hunger for knowledge having not been satisfied. He needed information, needed books filled with facts and data; not books full of stories about humans he didn’t care about or weren’t real. He wanted to learn, not a bedtime story.

“Flounder, why can’t you just tell me what this is all about?” Ariel voice carried in from the cavern entrance as she was led inside and Sherlock glanced over in her direction, pushing the books back into place haphazardly with hard, strong fingers, angered with his wasted time.

Flounder smiled, seeing Sherlock first as he led Ariel deeper into the cave, “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.”

Ariel swam in behind Flounder in the next moment and paused, pressing her hands to her chest in shock with a sound of pleasure, “Oh, Flounder,” she murmured at the sight of the Prince Eric statue, glancing at Sherlock who forced a smile onto his face as she giggled happily and grabbed Flounder, rolling shortly with him clasped in her arms. “Flounder you’re the best!”

“Sherlock helped me get it here,” He said when he was released and Ariel turned to Sherlock with a flood of delight, swimming up to him before he could stop her and embracing him tightly.

“Thank you,” she whispered, cupping Sherlock’s cheek with one hand and then turning to move up to the statue with wide-eyed glee. “It looks just like him! It even has his eyes.”

Sherlock huffed with a curl of his lip and opened his mouth to disagree scornfully, until he noticed something out the corner of his eyes and shied back at the silhouette of Triton whom drifted in from the entrance. Sherlock instantly wondered how he had found the place, pondering his own movements, if he had been followed without his knowledge; and then thought fleetingly about his brother telling the King, but his eyes dropped to Sebastian as he crawled in behind the King on the floor and Sherlock frowned deeply in acknowledgement.

““Why, Eric, run away with you? This is all so – so sudden,”” Ariel giggled playfully, swirling around with another bundle of titters that cut off quickly as she was faced with her father. “Daddy!”

Flounder fled to hide behind a decorated treasure chest the moment he turned to the King, and Sherlock drifted downward in a slow descent, sticking to the shadows as Triton began to speak sternly, “I consider myself a reasonable merman,” Triton moved forward, and Sherlock watched Ariel cringe backward onto the statue meekly in response. “I set certain rules, and I expect those rules to be obeyed!”

“But Dad I—” 

“Is it true you rescued a human from drowning?” Triton asked shortly, his gaze jumping from Ariel to Sherlock so quickly that Sherlock froze on the spot and clenched his teeth together in reaction. “And you—”

Ariel noticed Triton’s line of sight and interrupted him just as he had her, moving out to faintly block Sherlock from sight, “Daddy, I had to…”

“Contact between the human world and the mer-world is strictly forbidden! Ariel, you know that! Everyone knows that!” He exclaimed, once again moving his eyes to Sherlock pointedly over Ariel’s slender shoulder.

“He would have died—” Ariel told him.

Triton threw up his hand and gestured with the trident simultaneously, turning his back on her, “One less human to worry about!”

Sherlock straightened indignantly at the statement, suddenly thinking of his brother again, and swam forward as Ariel glared and retorted, “You don’t even know him.”

“Know him?” Triton sneered angrily, turning back around and leaning into Ariel’s personal space, scaring her behind the statue’s shoulder. “I don’t have to know him. They’re all the same!”

“How can you possibly know that?” Sherlock bellowed in rage. “We’re not all the same, so what makes you think they are? You know nothing about them!”

Triton’s eyes narrowed, cold and incensed, “I know enough! Spineless, savage, harpooning, fish-eaters, incapable of any feeling—”

“Daddy, I love him!” Ariel blurted loudly, shying back once again behind the statue as everyone jerked as a result. Sherlock swam further forward to be closer to her and looked at her with temporary exasperation, motioning for her to stay back and facing Triton head on.

“No…” Triton said lowly in disbelief, shifting his wide eyes between Ariel and Sherlock.

“Wait,” Sherlock tried, lifting his hands in a peaceful gesture and drifting partly toward the King, thinking fast. “Just, wait a moment. She—”

“Have you lost your senses completely?” Triton thundered, paying no heed to Sherlock’s words. “He’s a human, you’re a mermaid!”

Sherlock looked back at hearing the same sort of words he’d so recently said to Ariel, and Ariel glowered as she wrapped her arms around the statue Eric’s neck, “I don’t care,” she uttered.

“So help me Ariel, I am going to get through to you,” Triton said as his expression darkened to such an extent that Sherlock tried again to approach him, shaking his head as he comprehended what the outcome to the situation would so obviously be with a sort of crawling dread; the memories of his mother throwing or destroying his own collection as a merboy flashing through his mind, “And if this is the only way, so be it!”

“No!” Sherlock shouted as the trident glowed with a bright sparking and crackling of power, throwing everything into sharp contrasting shapes of darkness and light. “Wait!”

Triton shot a nearby globe with no kind of hesitation and Ariel blinked in shock, “Daddy!” she cried, lifting her hands in distress as pieces of it exploded outward messily. “No….no, please—Daddy, stop!”

“No! King Triton, this is ridiculous! It accomplishes nothing!” Sherlock yelled and looked around at each object the King destroyed, following the disorganised route of each shot, and then covered his face when smashed mirror shards zoomed toward him in an eruption of sharp, glittering, gold fragments that reflected Ariel and the King tenfold, “Stop!”

Triton continued without pause and furiously shattered, damaged and blew up object after object, indifferent of what it was, or how long and hard Ariel and Sherlock had spent finding it and bringing it back. Ariel shook her head in anguish and turned sharply in a shaking circle as everything was ruined around her, her eyes big in the flashes of golden light from the trident. 

When Triton blasted at something over Sherlock’s shoulder, Ariel trembled into movement and swam toward him, clutching at his arm pleadingly, scared for everyone’s safety. She saw the way her father looked at the statue of Eric, once she had moved away from it, and her entire face crumpled in realisation.

“Daddy, no!” She beseeched, to no avail, as Triton turned toward it with a powerful swing of his trident and a merciless look on his face.

Sherlock flitted his eyes at the statue seconds before Triton shot at it, and swam back and away, as the entire thing was taken over by golden cracks of energy that burst it apart with an almighty crash and a swell of bubbles. Pressing himself against one wall of the cave with an awkward sprawling, Sherlock blinked and slowly turned his gaze to Triton when Ariel collapsed to the floor in despair, curling up and sobbing where the statue had once stood, surrounded by broken bits and pieces of objects that were barely recognisable.

Triton’s face fell, and ashamed at his actions in the presence of his daughter’s cries, he bowed his head and left without a word or a backward glance, while Sebastian moved toward Ariel gradually and sadly, “Ariel, I…” he started apologetically. 

“Just go away,” Ariel told him through her weeping, keeping her head down in the fold of her arms.

Sherlock sank down to sit in the far corner of the cave, draped in shadow, and watched Flounder and Sebastian leave. He knew he should leave himself but couldn’t seem to move or draw his eyes away from the destruction around him. He remembered a lot of the items vividly, remembered when Ariel had found and showed them to him with a wide and innocent smile, overjoyed with what she had discovered. Sherlock had collected a few of them himself, and given them to Ariel if they had not taken much of his curiosity. 

Two shadows shifted overhead, bringing Sherlock out of his thoughts, and he glanced up abruptly to observe a pair of moray eels swimming above Ariel’s body, “Poor child,” one cooed with an odd and purring voice.

“Poor, sweet child,” the other continued whilst Ariel slowly sat up in bewilderment. 

“She has a very serious problem,” the first stated, swimming close and around Ariel. Perceiving that they didn’t notice Sherlock’s presence, Sherlock moved further back into the shadows, silent and still, and listened intently.

“If only there were something we could do…” the second pondered as they both stopped in front of Ariel as she turned to follow them, “but there is something.”

Ariel, confused and still overly upset, looked at them as she leaned back, “Who—who are you?” she asked in a small voice that Sherlock had to strain to hear.

“Don’t be scared.” One said.

“We represent someone who can help you,” the other continued as his counterpart curled around Ariel’s middle in a slither that repulsed Sherlock.

“Someone who could make all your dreams come true.”

“Just imagine—” they said in unison as they coiled together, only one of them addressing Ariel next, “you and your prince—” before they both spoke together again “Together, forever…”

Ariel regarded them, still confused, “I…I don’t understand.”

“Ursula,” said one of them, causing Sherlock to perk up in intrigue from his position even though he had predicted where it was ultimately leading, “has great powers.”

Sitting back with a faint gasp at the name, Ariel pressed one hand to her chest, “The sea witch?” she whispered, before she thought about it and shook her head slowly. “Why, that’s—I couldn’t possibly—No! Get out of here! Leave me alone!”

The eels, nonplussed, glanced at one another and then turned to leave, “Suit yourself,” one murmured.

“It was only a suggestion,” said the other, flicking the face from the recently broken Eric statue toward Ariel with a sneering and devious expression.

At the sound of it skipping to rest beside her, Ariel turned and picked it up tenderly. She gazed at it, stroking it with her fingers and seemed to glance from it to the eels and back again several times in consideration. At the last moment, she spotted Sherlock from his place amongst the debris, and paused, as if waiting for him to stop her and talk her out of it. Sherlock gazed at her steadily and then lowered his eyes to the floor, clenching his fingers in sudden deliberation. He could stop her and he knew he could, either by talking her out of it, going with her, or bringing her father back; but the thought of the human world, and most importantly, of Jim’s words, were almost too strong to ignore. What Jim had said echoed back at him as images of the blonde haired human rippled behind his eyes.

“Wait,” Ariel called out submissively, hand outstretched when Sherlock looked back up at her.

“Yes?” The eels replied in unison and nimbly, knowingly, turned back to face her. They wore exaggerated expressions of innocence and glanced and followed Ariel as she moved up toward them with her chest puffed out in confidence and determination, her face shuttered of the emotion she had showed not moments before.

“All right,” she told him, looking at the face of Eric one last moment before she put it aside. “Where is she? How do I get to her?”

The eels both bowed and swayed out in front of her, slipping further and further toward the entrance of the cave, baiting her nearer, “Just follow us,” they said together, their voices droning and resounding in a swirling, slithering sound that reminded Sherlock of Jim’s sharp clawed fingers and glowing eyes.

Sherlock bared his teeth and abruptly swam out to grasp her arm as she moved to trail after the eels in resolve, stopping her and surprising the eels so much that they gaped at him before they both glared wickedly, “Ariel—” Sherlock began, at a loss of what it was that he had wanted to say to begin with. He needed to let her go. 

“You were right,” Ariel said quietly, glancing at Sherlock with shimmering eyes, “It wouldn’t work between Eric and I. Not with me being the way I am… Perhaps Ursula could help?—You should come with me. She could help you too? – You still want to go to the human world, don’t you? See the one you saved?”

Sherlock tucked his head down and pulled his hand away, “Yes.”

“Then come with me,” Ariel smiled and took hold of his arms, squeezing his biceps until he focused on her face with an impassive expression. “We can go together…”

“I don’t need to see her,” Sherlock informed Ariel and swam back when Ariel frowned and let him go, lowering her arms. 

“What?” Ariel muttered, still frowning at him.

Sherlock grimaced and shook his head, changing the subject, “You have to know; Ursula, she’ll… ask for something from you. She’ll ask for payment – It won’t be anything material. She’ll take something important from you, something that you may think you don’t need, but you will. Do you hear me? Think about what she asks for before you sign anything over to her. Think if it’s worth it—Is it, Ariel? Is any of this worth it?”

Ariel hugged her own torso in puzzlement, “How do you know all this? Have you visited her before? Did you make some sort of deal with her? – Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It wasn’t her,” Sherlock said curtly and glared up at the eels when they moved close to get her attention again. Ariel seemed to want to ask Sherlock more questions but shook her head and turned to follow the eels out of the cave with a narrowed look in Sherlock’s direction.

Sherlock gripped the strap of bag on his shoulder and after staring at her departing, fluttering tail, he moved out himself, peeking from the threshold as he heard Sebastian’s voice when he and Flounder tried to intercept her.

“Ariel – Where are you going? Ariel, what are you doing here with this riff-raff?” he asked her and waved his pincers at the eels that had shifted closer to Ariel’s head.

“I’m going to see Ursula,” Ariel told him harshly with a sudden sharp tone, mouth puckered and downturned.

Sebastian looked stricken and grabbed at her tail, “Ariel, no! No, she’s a demon, she’s a monster!”

“Why don’t you go tell my father? You’re good at that,” she said sardonically, flicking him off her tailfin with a forceful movement.

“But…but, I…” Sebastian fumbled with vague gestures, and then narrowed his eyes stubbornly, turning to Flounder. “Come on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry...I honestly could not tell the eels apart (still). I tried to listen to their voices but sometimes they'd sound extremely similar when other times they'd sound different. If anyone knows which of them said what, let me know, and I'll edit this chapter.


	12. The Woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...As you can tell from the title of the chapter, yes, Irene Adler is in this now. I thought it would be funny/fun to have her in it.  
>  I like the character of Irene in a lot of Sherlock related things, so I might mix them up a bit. She'll not be a dominatrix in this. Obviously.

Sherlock watched them go and turned around when he lost sight of them, only to bump bodily into Jim whose entire form was black until his teeth flashed white and colour leaked down him in an intricate pattern, like the webbing in fins, and dripped down his figure to gleam in the ends of his tail. Jim giggled and grabbed for Sherlock’s wrist, tugging him closer and staring into his face with a look that made shivers run down Sherlock’s spine, unstoppable and continuous. Sherlock had thought that he’d gotten used to the look and presence of Jim, but seeing him again, disproved that instantly; he’d forgotten the vibe that surrounded him and the sense of dread that it brought. 

“Good job, dear little Sherlock,” Jim crooned, combing back Sherlock’s hair with his free hand, the sharp and clawed fingernails scraping over Sherlock’s scalp painfully. “So quick, so efficient. Though, it was a close call—Nearly messed it all up with your stupid little principles. I thought better of you, Sherlock. Don’t you want to be human?”

“It wasn’t my principles,” Sherlock sneered and wrestled free, swimming back and motioning to where Ariel had gone. “And I did nothing. You didn’t need me—She didn’t need me. She would have gone to the sea witch with or without my input, after what her father did.”

Jim shook his head with an amused smile, “Not true. – If I hadn’t have met you when I did, you would have talked her out of it, and talked circles around Ursula while you were at it. Would you not have? – Think about it. If you had known nothing of me, or of anything, yet you had heard or seen that the little Princess wanted to visit the sea witch; would you not try and stop her, to convince her of her stupidity if nothing else?”

Sherlock frowned and shook his head but pressed his lips together and glared, “It’s done now,” he muttered through his teeth. “You got your way.”

“Yes,” Jim said with a titter of abhorrent laughter, and held out a vial to Sherlock, the same sort he had shown and offered Sherlock before. “Here you are. As promised—I assume I don’t have to tell you to go ashore before you drink this? – Your tail will disappear once you have consumed it all. It’ll shrink up into human legs, and you will feel a great, tremendous pain, as if you were being ripped in two!”

Taking it after a slight hesitation, Sherlock regarded it between his fingers with a faintly furrowed brow. The words he had said to Ariel came back to him and he wondered if it truly was worth all it. Although Sherlock was not giving up anything to Jim like he had been thinking of doing before, he was still giving up his entire life, his family, to step foot on land, unable to return to the sea once he did so. Sherlock glanced up into the evil face of the merman and Jim’s pupils seemed to dance and contract, cutting through his dark brown irises like an open wound. He grinned at Sherlock and stroked the side of Sherlock’s face, cutting along his cheekbone faintly.

“Is—?” Sherlock started, but Jim rolled his eyes, bared his teeth in frustration and cut Sherlock off with a loud and exaggerated sigh.

“Ugh. Honestly, Sherlock – Stop prying,” Jim said with bite, his eyes flashing until he relaxed with a soft smile and leered into Sherlock’s personal space, as he had done before. “If you continue to pry, you won’t be allowed to continue.”

Sherlock waited for him to finish and narrowed his eyes with a look of impatience, “Is this different?”

“Different?” Jim repeated innocently, his eyes gleaming. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“This potion,” Sherlock scowled, gesturing with it and swimming around Jim angrily. “Is it different?—You think I’ll just take this without knowing? – What you gave me that enabled me to read human language looked the same as this, but was not the same. This, like all the vials you have paraded around and shoved at me, looks the same, but is it?”

Jim snorted and teasingly twirled to face Sherlock quickly, grabbing one of his shoulders, “How will you know without taking it, dear Sherlock?”

“What will it do?” Sherlock demanded, and shrugged Jim off strongly.

Jim held up his hands in a mock show of submission, “Just what I told you—”

“For how long?” Sherlock asked shortly and arched his eyebrow when Jim paused, Jim’s sharp smile unfurling widely to crawl up his face and crumple his gaunt cheeks. “How long?”

Jim sniggered but then all amusement fell from his expression and his form blurred and darkened as he glared, “This is your only chance. You refused my first offer. It’s this or nothing. Make your choice.”

Sherlock looked down at the vial and then up at the surface, cringing as he nodded at Jim, who calmed and winked at Sherlock before he swam off with a rippling laugh that made Sherlock’s heart pick up. Jim glanced back with glowing eyes and merged into the dark corners of a towering and jagged stone, disappearing from view, although his laugh continued on for another half a minute. 

Sherlock squinted in thought after several still seconds and swam to and fro, grabbing handfuls of his curls and pressing at his temples as he tried to work out what Jim’s motive was with him, with Ariel, with everything once more. With a snarl, coming to no such conclusion, he opened his eyes, shoved the vial into his bag, and turned to go after Ariel, wanting to watch and hear what the sea witch had to say to try and figure it out with the extra knowledge available to him there. He needed more information. 

However, he paused after a few strong pushes of his tail and drifted in limbo lost and overly angry between the surface, Ariel’s cavern, and the direction Ariel had been led. He didn’t know where Ursula’s lair was and Ariel had gone too far for him to track swiftly. He only knew where he had visited, what he had seen, and Ursula’s abode was not one of the things he had been able to find. Sherlock knew he could try, but it would be a waste of time, for all Sherlock knew, the sea witch could have already granted Ariel’s wish.

With another strangled noise of aggravation, Sherlock took off for the surface quickly, pushing up and out of the waves with an arc of his spine and tail, splashing back under so hard, that his tail fin threw thick water droplets in all directions with a small current of spraying, rippling waves. He jumped again, higher than he had before, and used the short time he was airborne to look for land and turn toward it. He cut through the water faster and faster, so swift that his sides ached with the effort, and rolled and changed course with lightning speed when he noticed the piece of beach that Ariel and he had pulled Prince Eric upon.

Dragging himself up a small sand bank, Sherlock struggled and shifted onto his back, sitting up to gaze down at his tail in sudden marvel on how such a thing would turn into the human legs that he’d envisaged many times. He peered around for Scuttle, to make sure that he was truly alone, and then reached into his bag to take out the vial, toying with the cork that sealed it as he deliberated one more time and possibly for the last time. 

The sun was warm and bright on his skin, and glistened from his scales with a shimmer that decorated his tail with diamonds of light, and brought out more colour in his tailfin as he lifted it, fanning it out with a languid stretch. Sherlock sighed and bent his tail over himself flexibly, shielding his head from the glare off the sea, and inspected the vial and the contents within pointlessly over and over and over again. It all accomplished nothing, as Sherlock could not unearth anything about it no matter how hard he tired or how long he stared. The vial was glass wrapped in thin, almost delicate looking gold plating, and the cork in the top was a strange material that Sherlock had not seen; and the contents, being something so mysterious and magical, that Sherlock would not be able to understand it even if he was able to experiment on it somewhere.

Dropping his tail back down with a roll of his eyes at his own actions and wandering thoughts, he relished the sensation of being stretched out on the warmed sand for a few moments more, gazing with sore eyes at his scales and the vial in quick succession until he grew tired of his own reluctance and wrenched the cork out, drinking the draught in one gulp with clenched eyes. It was thick and cloying as it ran down his throat, and he coughed at the burst of sudden flavour, that curled and waved between tastes, some familiar and some not as it shifted from a metallic taste to a rich and salty one; then from something too bitter to something far too sweet. It poured and oozed down into his stomach, coating and clogging, and he swallowed roughly once, and then again, before his entire body convulsed whilst he gasped, fidgeting in a sudden overwhelming bombardment of shivers, and opened his eyes wide.

Sherlock fell back and dropped the empty vial, bucking taut and strong as his tail flexed and then shook violently with an uncontrollable tremor that shook his entire body. It felt as if a blade was slicing him apart rather than a ripping, as Jim had mentioned, and Sherlock choked on a shout, scrambling to grab hopelessly at his body with his shaking hands. He wanted instantly for the agony to stop. He wanted his mother, his father, and even his brother. Sherlock had been coddled as a youth, and had spent a lot of time balling in the arms of his mother or brother, sometimes just for the attention more than anything, and in that moment he wanted to be back there, pressed to the soft bust of his mother’s chest with his brother’s hand smoothing his back. He whimpered and tried to get a view of the sea, but his vision blurred and faded in and out in tandem to the beat of his heart.

The pain was so immense that it made his temples throb and he screamed and clawed and writhed in place, kicking up sand violently. It was as though his organs were shifting along with the splitting of his tail and he curled up onto his side, then arched and flipped onto his chest with a hoarse bellow of grieve, feeling sand in his mouth and eyes right before he passed out, his arms extended.

When he came to, it was to a pair of small, black, high-heeled boots stuck in the sand near one of his outstretched hands. He recovered slowly and blinked, trying to focus, and followed the boots to the flowing fabric of a skirt, then higher to find a human woman with dark brunette hair, blue piercing eyes and painted red lips, looking down at him with faint concern. She noticed his attention on her and then suddenly smiled, crouching down with a tilt of her head. Sherlock took in her elegantly styled hair and keen gaze, and then dropped his eyes to her slender hands as she reached out and cupped his jaw in a gently caress that seemed almost suggestive.

“Look at those cheekbones,” she murmured, and Sherlock cocked his head aside at the sound of her accent, suddenly greatly engrossed in her. “Are you hurt? – I must say I feel a tad overdressed in your presence. Not that I mind, of course.”

Sherlock blinked at her teasing tone and then abruptly tensed and turned onto his back, sitting up to gape down at the pale, long, leanly muscular legs that had replaced his tail. He touched them with a few trembling fingertips and then beamed with a hitched gasp of wonder at the expanse of skin and bone. He wriggled his toes and then lifted both legs, pulling them close to his face agilely to examine them. He trailed a kneecap in glee with the end of his nose and smoothed both hands along to his ankles as he rotated them above him.

“Hit your head, have you?” The woman asked and moved back into his line of sight. She grinned at him with amusement, still concerned but more the longer she gazed at him the more interested she was. Her eyes dropped down to his waist and then lower after a few seconds, and Sherlock followed the pointed look.

Releasing his legs in surprise, Sherlock reached for his genitals and flexibly tried to bend down close to them, “Interesting,” he murmured, speaking for the first time since taking the potion. His voice was coarse and deeper than normal, scratchy from his screaming. Sherlock flitted his eyes up at the sky to determine that time of day, and realised it had been about half an hour or so since he’d taken the concoction.

“I’ll say,” the woman replied and then touched his bare shoulder. “Not that I’m not enjoying…well, everything, but what are you doing out here? Where are your clothes?”

“Clothes? I don’t—Oh! Oh. Right. Yes. Clothes,” Sherlock uttered and spared her a quick and brief glance. “I don’t have any – what I mean is, yes. I hit my head. I don’t know why I don’t have clothes.” He took his attention away from himself and pressed his lips together as he regarded her with more detail and wondered just how odd he might seem to another human.

The woman flicked her eyes over him again, “You were screaming.”

Sherlock nodded slowly and then shrugged with a forced, dazzlingly smile, “I can’t remember much. I must have been attacked,” he said and all at once scrambled to try and stand up, wobbling and struggling onto his feet only to fall to the sand and scrape his knees with a hiss and a frown. “Definitely a hit to the head. I can barely stand.”

“You do have a bit of a bruise – but it seems older than a few minutes ago.” Watching him with a bemused and fascinated expression, the woman then went for his bag, “And obviously you weren’t a victim of someone stealing anything, because that sword is immensely—”

“No!” Sherlock exclaimed brusquely, and snatched his bag up with a glower. “I told you, didn’t I? I don’t recall. I must have been attacked in some way. That happens, does it not?”

“Hm,” she replied and then smiled at him, tugging and then ripping at something under her skirt. “There now – we’re both defrocked…sort of.”

Sherlock frowned and then cringed back a little when she leaned over toward him, wrapping a white, soft fabric around his waist and tying it off tightly to cover up his genitals. Sherlock clutched his bag to his chest and looked down at the material as he tried once again to get to his feet, swaying and stumbling to lean against a nearby rock.

“My name is Irene,” she told him as she ripped another long strip of fabric from under her skirt to drape over his shoulders with another smile that radiated with warmth and impishness. “Why don’t you come with me? Get you looked at?”

Allowing her to help him up properly, Sherlock looked down his nose at her but couldn’t help the curling grin at her words, thinking of all the sights he’d see on the way, “Yes,” he agreed and took a tentative and shaking step forward, watching the bunching of muscles in his thighs. “And the name is Sherlock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tempted to have Sherlock sing...thoughts?  
> It'll be weird, but still...


	13. Wildest Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock sings in this, and so, for those who have not heard "Beyond my Wildest Dreams" from The Little Mermaid Broadway Show, please click [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trY707QMOtM) and listen to the song. (The lyrics should be in the comments, so you can see the original words if needed)
> 
> I have changed some words to fit Sherlock, and obviously Sherlock is a man, and so any high-pitched tones/notes to the song won't be as high with him haha Or at all.  
> I've timed all the words with the original words and the beat of the song, so they do go together. Sometimes it's fast paced though, and so you have to sing the words quickly. But they should fit. I think they do at any rate (and I've spent hours going over and over them -- with some words you need to sing the syllables so it fits.)  
> Irene sings too. And some random villagers.  
> I've written it as I have the other small snippets of songs I've done in the story before, so it can be read as dialogue. I might write the lyrics out "properly" in the notes at the end if asked for.
> 
> Anyway, please listen to the song, just because it's a great song and the Broadway show is brilliant!

The walk up from the beach was long and awkward, and Sherlock huffed, complained and shuffled beside and then against Irene as he stubbed his toes or tripped to his knees, feeling horridly clumsy and uncomfortable as he learned to walk on his new appendages. He felt embarrassed and frustrated at the slow speed in which he learned, falling over the uneven ground, but Irene merely grinned at him gently and picked him up, lifting him to his feet with a delicate yet strong hand at the bend of his elbow. Sherlock gazed at her as she dusted him off and rubbed the pinked, scraped skin of his shins, and tilted his head at her when she straightened and tugged up a scarf from around her neck to fix around her head. It seemed to be something someone would do to disguise oneself and Sherlock frowned at her in confusion, wondering whom she was to other humans, which deemed such an action to be taken. Irene saw him looking and gave him a cheeky sort of glance, her elegant nose crumpled in amusement.

Taking her offered arm, Sherlock let her led him up a winding dirt path without so much sharp stones. The grass was greener the further they went and Sherlock scrunched up his face when she picked a flower from the ground and slipped it into his curls. He plucked it back out and inspected it, tasting the petals and then the entire thing until he noticed Irene’s bemused look and spat it back out.

“Where did you say you were from?” She asked him as she continued their languid stroll.

Sherlock flicked his eyes out to the sea temporarily, “I didn’t.”

Irene’s mouth quirked and then pursed, “So where are you from? – Obviously not from around here. Your accent.”

“I could say the same for you,” Sherlock retorted and arched his eyebrow, running his eyes down her body as if he were inspecting her clothes, but in reality he knew nothing from what he saw, not without a background to the fabrics that women wore or a line of other woman to see if there were any difference. All he could determine was that she had been on the beach for longer than Sherlock had himself, going from the amount of sand build up on her shoes and the end of her skirt. “Not enjoying yourself here?”

“I’m having a better time than you, apparently,” was her reply, and Sherlock stifled his smirk as she beamed at him. “I like my alone time before my show.”

Sherlock eyed her closely, “Singer?”

Irene’s beaming smile seemed to brighten further, “Normally I wouldn’t be surprised – a lot of people know who I am, after all – but you, you’re…different.”

“I’m not different!” Sherlock said shortly before he could stop himself, and cringed inwardly, looking away from her and opening his mouth to rectify what he’d said. However, just as he turned his head to face her once more, he caught sight of the town they were nearing and his throat closed in anticipation and excitement.

The closer and closer they drew to it the more Sherlock became fidgety in expectation, and he let go of Irene’s arm in a sudden rush of adrenaline when different scents invaded his nose, scents so strange that he snuffled with the strength of them. Gaining more and more confidence on his new feet, Sherlock arrogantly enjoyed the feeling of the grass between his toes as he sauntered off the dusty path; rapidly mastering the art of walking by the time they hit the outskirts of the village. Irene tried to steer him down a side street, to hide away from the bustle of villagers, but Sherlock grinned and abruptly escaped her, rushing into the centre of town with his bag still clutched to his chest with one arm.

Everyone nearby paused and gasped at his presence, some shielding their eyes from his near nakedness with flustered faces, and Sherlock stared at them all with a sensation of an overwhelming swell of emotion and an urge he hadn’t felt for years. Irene moved near him with a slight outstretched hand to beckon him back, but he ignored her and stepped forward, his bare feet sliding over the smoothed cobbled street beneath him. Everything was bright and lively and new, and Sherlock could barely contain his happiness, his eyes flitting between everyone and everything, taking in and documenting it all. The flood new smells for his senses were enough to make him dizzy, yet Sherlock’s smile only widened and he straightened his spine with a surge of eagerness.

“Oh! Just look,” He suddenly sang, his heart fluttering harsh and fast and strong in his chest, “I can’t believe this is all it took. Oh! It’s bliss! I dreamed that it would be somewhat – but not, like this!”

Irene blinked in surprise and then moved after Sherlock with a small grin as he turned and bounded toward a market stall that seemed to be selling a collection of walking sticks, “Look over there!” he continued to sing and snatched up one with a silver, curved handle. “Oh my God. How very odd. And what might they be? Something splendid, maybe!”

“Sherlock—” Irene laughed and took the walking stick out of his grasp, giving it back when Sherlock turned his head and stepped up to another stall, grabbing a handful of pocket watches.

“Look over here! Could you burst? Isn’t it just bedazzling, dazing, utterly amazing! Gazing round, it’s like I died! Just seeing it feels so good, I’d dance if I only could!” He went on, not being put off when someone shooed him away, making him drop the watches in a heap, some of them clattering around his feet. Sherlock stepped back and took in the whole of the town and its streets with a swoop. “I’d hoped and wished, and wanted so to be here. Wished and begged, and planned it to a “T”. Yearned and gosh! Just look – it’s really me here! Walking around, strange as it seems, somewhere beyond my wildest dreams!”

“Look at him there, looking round, and what a sound!” Irene sang behind him as she stepped over the few broken watches with amusement and watched him with a slant of her head as he pounced on stall after stall. “Just keeps on gawking – odd how he knows nothing. Look at him stare—”

“Look here miss!” Someone called after her in a musical tune, but she waved them away and followed Sherlock onward while he dashed to sniff at a fresh loaf of bread.

“Want him I think,” she carried on with hilarity, her hands clasped before her, “to stay for dinner.”

A local man sneered behind his hand as Irene past by, his eyes on the torn material wrapped around Sherlock in disgust, “What does she see in him?” he sang to his nodding friends.

“Hush now, boys – give it a try,” Irene winked at them, and gestured to the flash of Sherlock’s muscled legs and arms, laughing when they huffed at her in reply.

“Just picture the table chat!” A man snorted snootily under his breath.

“One sided, if even that!” Another replied with such a filthy suggestive expression that Irene rolled her eyes and picked up her pace to be closer to Sherlock again as he disregarded them and rushed up the street.

“I’d hoped and wished, and wondered what I’d do here. Wished and begged, and pictured what I’d see. Yearned and gosh!” Sherlock sang absentmindedly, slinging his bag over his shoulder and seizing a briar pipe with a polished silver lid. “My thoughts are coming true here! Look at it all, look how it gleams! Lovely beyond my wildest dreams…”

Sherlock trailed off and Irene frowned, following his suddenly caught gaze to the blonde haired human standing at the edge of a street looking at a leather bound book with the intent to buy. Sherlock put the pipe back down and walked toward him almost dreamily, gazing at him with a thunder and rushing of his blood. He hadn’t actually thought he’d see him again. The human was one for the sea, normally they never stayed in one place, and so Sherlock had tried not to think of never being able to see and know him again. Sherlock laughed quietly with happiness and clutched at the white material still draped over him, unable to slow the beat of his heart.

“Look – it’s him,” Sherlock sang breathily as he followed after him when he turned a corner down another street. “So handsome, wonderful, not dim. Great, steadfast. Magnificent from head to toe, and oh…

Irene came to a stop at Sherlock’s side as he smiled broadly at the sight of the blonde haired human strolling yards in front of him with a faint limp, “I’d hoped and wished, my life would feel enchanted. Wished and begged – inspected all I saw. Yearned and gosh, my hopes are more than granted,” Sherlock continued to sing, and then suddenly beamed, stepping in front of Irene and turning on his bare heels to face her, sweeping his arms outwards at everything around him. “Look at it all, hall after hall. Perfect as you could please here. Marvels galore, and even more – Lord, did I mention he’s here? And if – who knows? – all of it goes, past even these extremes. Just look at me and you will see, someone beyond his wildest dreams!”

Sherlock turned sharply from her in the next second and ran at full speed up to the blonde haired human, skidding uncomfortably over the stones to stand at the human’s back, bending slightly into his personal space and inhaling his scent. He smelt of the sea and a masculine aroma that Sherlock instantly recognised as the blonde haired human’s own personal fragrance, having had smelt it the first time they had met. It was a mixture that was both unfamiliar and familiar in equal measures, and it made heat flare through Sherlock’s body in a ripple of sensation.

Biting his bottom lip, Sherlock adjusted his bag, tugged on the sheet of fabric covering him self-consciously and reached out to tap him on the shoulder with one finger with a tingle of elation, just as Irene made it to his side with interest in what Sherlock was doing. The blonde human turned faintly in reaction, only half paying attention, and then jerked at the sight of Sherlock with wide eyes, stumbling back into a nearby wall clumsily and quite loudly, knocking over a rack of umbrellas with an awful clanking, much to Irene’s amusement.

“You’re still here,” Sherlock said, before he waved his hand dismissively just as the human gaped and opened his mouth to speak. Sherlock stepped up close again in delight. “What’s your name?”

The blonde human blinked at him, flicking his eyes up and down Sherlock’s form and then over at Irene in question, “I…um, hello.”

“Hello,” Sherlock huffed, the smile on his face twisting and then faltering completely. “You…do remember me?”

“Um,” he replied, eyes tracking to and from Irene, and then suddenly dropping to Sherlock’s bare legs. “Well, I…”

Sherlock looked down, wriggling his dirty toes, and then inhaled deeply, “Ah. Yes. I can explain—your name though? I’d quite like to know it. I never asked for it before, in fact, I don’t think I spoke to you at all, did I? Although, you can hardly blame me for that in all honesty, as I was rather overwhelmed by everything – and then there was that storm.”

“Storm?” Irene murmured with intrigue as she glanced between them both, her mouth still quirked.

“I would try and work it out with the information available – it’s what I would normally do, but I’m not accustomed to all of this, and everything about your person is extraneous,” Sherlock explained flippantly, frowning at the expression crossing over the blonde’s face and then fumbling to correct himself, “Extraneous compared to your name, I mean. I…would like to know your name. Please.”

“So, you know each other, but not on a name basis?” Irene asked with a smirk and a lift of her graceful eyebrow. “Interesting.”

Sherlock scowled half-heartedly at her, “There wasn’t time for an exchange of names,” he justified under his breath and focused back on the blonde human, who was still just staring at him silently. “…You are going to let me know your name?”

Irene, seeming to take pity on the gobsmacked blonde, sighed gently and reached over to pat his arm, “Perhaps you want to—?”

“John,” he replied abruptly, eyes still locked on Sherlock and his mouth twitching when Sherlock smiled at him brightly. “I…I need to go.”

Sherlock’s smile dropped from his face, “Go?” 

“Yes,” he said shortly and then struggled away, brushing past Sherlock’s shoulder and quickly walking away with a flush. “I…sorry. Just need to…go.”

Sherlock watched him leave at a stumble and sagged with a deep frown, “I don’t…” he muttered, trailing off when Irene took his arm and steered him down another street just as John disappeared in a crowd of bustling people. Sherlock was confused and annoyed and angry, he wasn’t able to work out why John had left so suddenly. 

“Come along,” Irene said in a soothing sort of voice, her eyes soft but not pitying. “Let’s go before the guards are called on us or something equally as bothersome.”

“You have guards here too?” Sherlock complained in a mumble, staring at his own hands and then the floor in frustration. He felt slightly hollow and cold, and he could suddenly feel all the places on his feet and legs that throbbed in discomfort, coated in scrapes and cuts and developing bruises.

“Of course,” she laughed softly, tugging him close by his arm. “Perhaps if you were properly dressed he’d be more inclined to converse with you?”

Sherlock lifted his head, “You think so?” he asked with an arched brow, taking in his appearance and then the clothes that a passing, disdainful man was wearing.

Irene shrugged daintily and then stroked his knuckles, “Possibly. – It couldn’t hurt though. You’d look dashing in a satin waistcoat,” she grinned and led him down a route behind houses, keeping him out of eyesight of any more villagers and caressing his forearm when he glanced over his shoulder somewhat dejectedly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if you think it turned out horridly, I might rewrite it without him singing.


	14. Splash!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Hopefully this isn't too cliché, but I sort of like it, and it makes sense in a way.
> 
> Hint: Jim is mean and untrustworthy.
> 
> I'm sorry in advance. I was watching and thinking of horror films and it might have affected my writing just a tad.

Sherlock hardly took in his surroundings as Irene guided him to where she was staying for her recent visit in the town, tugging him gently only at the wrist by the time they got there, as Sherlock shuffled uninterested and disconsolate and bothered beside her, his mind elsewhere. Somehow she easily talked her way around being with a half naked man once his presence kicked up a fuss, allowing Sherlock to walk into her lush and extravagant room without much question, and even less observation, as she dropped a purse of coins as payment. Irene smirked at Sherlock when he looked at her, and directed him down onto an overly cushioned chair. He watched her as she eyed him over and tapped her chin, tilting her head calculatingly whilst she gathered up a neatly torn piece of parchment and dipped her quill in an inkpot. Sherlock gazed at for only a moment.

“You’re very slender,” She murmured as she circled around him and scratched words on the paper, catching Sherlock’s attention, sudden and sharp. “However, you’re also very physically fit, which might cause a few problems – I can only imagine how tight some shirts might look on that pale, sculpted chest of yours.”

Sherlock blinked and looked down at himself, moving aside the fabric to examine the dips and grooves of his abdominal muscles and pectorals, “Hm – John is broader and just as fit, yet his clothes fit just fine…”

Irene paused behind him and Sherlock craned his neck to glance at her with a small frown, “You really like him, don’t you?” she said, not exactly looking for an answer to the question as she pulled up another chair and folded into it sophisticatedly. “How did you two meet?”

“I could be wrong, but I think that’s none of your business,” Sherlock retorted and looked away, picking and plucking at a loose thread from the material around his waist. He recalled the expression on John’s face again, and the look in his eyes, and wondered why he had left so abruptly. Was it truly the shock? The last time he had seen Sherlock was when he’d had a tail, after all.

“Maybe your meeting meant more to you than him,” Irene mused, her mouth curling when Sherlock clenched his jaw. “Although, he did seem happily surprised to see you – he’s a sailor, is he not?”

Sherlock lifted his chin and flitted his eyes at her, “Yes.” He murmured. “So?”

Irene shrugged and leaned back in her seat, “Just thinking what’s already crossed your mind, I suppose,” she told him. “He was obviously injured during that storm you spoke about, which explains why he stayed in town – plus the ship he was on, which I’m assuming was the Prince’s, was the one recently sunk? Quite impressive to be sailing with the Prince, normally he only sails with those he’s known for a long time, who are somewhat local, while your John is none of these. If I had to guess, I’d say he was from England. Maybe Scotland. I’d know for certain if he told you his surname.”

“He’s not injured anymore though,” Sherlock said, sitting up and leaning close to her in sudden concentration with a nod, “He had a limp but it was extremely faint and possibly psychological.”

“Or he was just pretending,” Irene smiled, gesturing with her quill when Sherlock arched his eyebrow. “He needs to stay here, right? So he has to pretend he’s still injured so he’s not called back to some new ship. They must have dozens of ships to replace the one lost. – I can only speculate he’d be called back, however. I honestly don’t know for sure. Not one for the rules of a sailor.”

Sherlock rubbed his mouth and shifted his focus from her face to one of the windows of her room, “He was pretending so he’d stay here in the hopes that he’d—”

“See you again,” Irene finished for him. “So, were you on the ship with him or did you meet him before he boarded? I presume the latter? Because the former makes no sense. You’re no sailor – I don’t know what you are…”

Ignoring her question, Sherlock smiled slowly, “He wanted to see me,” he breathed, frowning in the next second. “So why leave? I’m right here. Why did he walk away? I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask him questions. I have so many questions. – I didn’t even tell him my name.”

Irene shrugged and got back to her feet, “Perhaps he was shy? – What you both spoke about without giving your names is beyond me. Was it a conversation of the eyes? Just a passing look and you’re the best of friends?”

“Maybe it was you,” Sherlock accused, pointing at her and standing himself. “He kept looking at you. He didn’t know what to say or do because he was in the presence of you – and he probably stupidly thought that you and I—”

“It could have indeed been the audience,” Irene nodded in agreement as she interrupted without looking affected by Sherlock’s glare. “Not just me but the town, the villagers. You might not care what others think of you, but he might, and conceivably he didn’t want to bring more attention to you than was already upon you? – Or, he was just bewitched, bothered and bewildered with the sight of you? He’d not be the only one to suffer such a reaction...”

Sherlock ruffled at his curls, dusting the floor with a flurry sand, and shook his head, “You mean he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing?”

Irene smiled at him widely and then stepped close to flick more grains of sand from Sherlock’s collarbone, “Why don’t I have a bath run for you?” Not knowing what that was, Sherlock stared at her a moment more, keeping his expression impassive until she sighed and rolled her eyes. “All right. At least wash the dirt from your feet and legs.”

She turned and, folding up the section paper and slipping it down her bust, picked up a decorated bowl and jug, carrying it over to place it close to him. Sherlock eyed a dried sea sponge with a look of confusion, which he wiped from his face when she turned to him and then motioned him over, and then peeked inside the jug to see the clear water within. Sherlock regarded Irene as she took out the paper just to scribble something else down and fold it back up. He wasn’t exactly sure what the sponge was for, but he knew what she wanted him to do. Sherlock snorted inwardly to himself, finding it amusing that he had come from the water only to lather it back on himself again.

“I don’t know how long this will take me, hopefully not long. Don’t leave this room until I’m back.” Irene told him; smoothing her hands down her dress and reaching for a hat after some slight deliberation. “I would bring you with me, but we can’t risk it – and I would bring the tailor here, but I get the feeling you’d not appreciate the idea.”

Sherlock folded his arms tightly across his bared chest but inclined his head when she looked at him from under her lashes, “Very well. I understand that clothing is something that is required, otherwise there is an uproar and a ripple of disgusted looks, apparently.”

Patting his shoulder, she frowned at him vaguely, running her eyes over his frame, and then walked out the door, “Be good,” she grinned with a wink as it closed behind her.

Sighing, Sherlock dropped his bag and listened to her footsteps fade and then took a moment to walk around the room and pick up and inspect everything he saw, but he wasn’t in the right mood to do much more than stare at the objects blankly, and so he put them back down. Everything was new and should have aroused his curiosity, however Sherlock’s mind kept replaying the look of John’s face on repeat, forcing him to examine the way John’s eyes had widened and flicked down to Sherlock’s legs with befuddlement and incredulity. Sherlock rubbed at his chest when it ached and scowled at his reflection in the window glass, sitting back down in the plush chair with a loud exhale of annoyance. 

He had gone to the surface to understand the humans; to study and investigate and work with the bounty of objects available; to read all their books, and to know all he had ever wanted to know. Except instead, he was fixated on just one human, the blonde haired human called John, and nothing else. Maybe it would have been for the best if he’d not seen him so soon?

Berating himself, Sherlock hit the armrest with one hand and clenched a fistful of his curls in the other, “Anyone would think I’m Ariel,” he muttered with a snarl to the empty room. “But I’m not. I’m not some lovesick idiot who’d give up everything to—”

Suddenly thinking of Ariel, Sherlock wondered how she had faired with the sea witch. Had she taken the deal to get human legs? Something told Sherlock that she had, and he pondered how she looked and what she thought. He wasn’t sure how better she’d be at making her way to the town, or even to the palace, not if she was as naked as Sherlock had been when he had transformed.

“Knowing her luck, she's been found by that daft oaf of a Prince already,” He groused, slumping back in the chair. “He probably didn’t run away from her, either..."

Reviewing his feet and legs from his sprawled position, Sherlock reached over and took the dried sponge in one languid hand and dipped it into the water. He realised that it was an implement for washing after a few seconds of looking at it and brought it back out to press it on the small injuries and dirt that coated the skin of his knees and shins. Sherlock forced his mind on the prospect of being back out amongst the humans again once he was dressed like one, and ignored the involuntary want to go find John once more. He wanted to find more books, books in a better and sturdier condition, and books filled with facts and information relevant to his interests.

He was pulled by his thoughts, however, because as soon as the water contained in the sponge connected with his flesh and ran in small, clear droplets to puddle between his toes, the muscles in his legs twitched unpredictably and excruciatingly. Sherlock hissed, dropped the sponge on his right foot with a small splat, and sat up in sharp attention. The pain had been a lesser degree of what he’d felt after taking the potion, but enormously painful nonetheless, and Sherlock felt anxiety crawl up his throat. Had he been right all along? Had Jim tricked him? Was it not permanent? 

Everything was still for a moment and Sherlock frowned slowly, unable to properly breathe, and lifted a leg for assessment. As he stared, the skin of his ankle bubbled and a surge of liquid heat and sudden pain flooded through him so rapidly that the air was knocked from his lungs and he toppled to the floor in a gasping and writhing heap.

One of his knees jerked into the table the jug was perched upon and so the jug juddered in the bowel it sat in before then tumbling over, splashing water all over Sherlock’s body and soaking the fabric that still covered his middle. The instant it touched the skin of his legs, Sherlock let out a garbled scream into the carpet and quivered in agony, ripping at the material wrapped around him as the pale flesh of his legs turned once again to scales. 

His bones cracked loudly and sickeningly as they disfigured themselves, the sound filling and echoing around the room as they then reformed with the merging of his legs. Crying out brokenly, Sherlock’s eyes rolled up and then fluttered closed. He floated between unconsciousness as his body converted into its natural form, and he saw the flash of Jim’s sharp-toothed grin in the backs of his eyelids; heard his high-pitched cackle ring in his ears, and felt his cold, claw-like hands scraping down his body. Discomfort raked through his hips, to his genitals and down to his toes and back, throbbing roughly within him as his organs then gurgled and shifted, pushing bile up to fill his mouth.

When the pain was finally over, Sherlock panted, exhausted and silently sobbing, and opened his eyes to look down at his tail with a sudden flood of dread, “No…n-no. No, no, no, no, no!” He exclaimed with a tremor in his gravelly voice, his hands touching the scales as his tailfin waved and flexed. “…No. Please. I only just…”

Grinding his teeth, Sherlock glared heatedly at the ceiling and then covered his face in despair. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised at the outcome of something from the conniving merman, but he hadn’t imagined anything like what had just happened, or for it to happen so soon after taking the potion. Sherlock had been sure some sort of side affect would have been in his future; he just had not thought it could be something so cruel. The awfully rapid change and the lingering ache of agony, brought forth a burst of whimpers from his mouth, and Sherlock trembled on the drenched floor beneath him, curling his tail up and over himself to drape his tailfin over his head in anguish. He pushed his palms harder into his crumpled expression, and jerked with each hitching breath, trying to muffle his angered sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the idea is just too silly, let me know and I might change it...but there was always going to be a side-effect to Jim's potion...you all knew it. Jim is cruel, so therefore, cruel things happen. I was always going to have things not exactly work out as planned, so this really shouldn't come as a surprise.
> 
>  
> 
> The title of this chapter was a clue to what would happen. Not sure if you noticed. I love "Splash!" it's a great film! -- And if you've watched "Splash!" before, then you probably might know what's coming.  
> I love mixing different Mermaid things together!


	15. John

After several passing minutes Sherlock flopped onto his front and pushed himself up with his hands, half crawling back to the chair pointlessly, eyes blank and staring ahead. He needed to think of a way to get back to the ocean. Although Sherlock was miserable, he wasn’t about to be strung up by the humans if Irene took his natural form badly. He thought of her intently, wondering about her penetrating gaze and red, quirked mouth, as he went to pull up into the chair, but a sudden small clattering from one of the windows caught his attention. Sherlock frowned over at it and then watched as a few small stones were thrown up into the air to collide with the window again. Flitting his eyes around in perplexity, Sherlock lowered himself back to the floor and slithered awkwardly to the window, grunting as he dragged himself up and looked out with a cautious squinting.

John stepped back and further into view on the cobblestones below and smiled up at Sherlock shyly, waving, “John?” Sherlock muttered aloud, and fiddled with the window inadequately in irritation until he finally figured out how to open it. “John! What are you doing? I thought that—”

“I’m sorry,” John called up to him, fiddling with his collar and then pacing back and forth with one hand on his hip and the other combing through his short hair. “About before. I…I shouldn’t have just walked away, but you have to understand that I had thought I was delusional! I thought I’d made you up or something – On the ship, I…I’d been drinking. A few jugs of rum and possibly wine, I’m not entirely sure, so I just didn’t know if what I’d seen had been real. – Well, no, that’s not true. I both utterly didn’t believe in you and completely, wholeheartedly believed in you at the same time. Does that make sense? God, I know I sound completely crazy. But then again, I am talking to you—not that you’re crazy, just that you’re not normal. You’re a mythological creature that, logically, should not exist! What I wouldn’t give to find out how you do… No, wait, that came out wrong. Listen, I just didn’t know how to react. Plus, you…you were half naked, with legs, and…and that voice…”

“How did you find me?” Sherlock asked him, pulling more of his torso onto the windowsill, aware of John’s worried gaze as the window frame dug into his naked skin and he knocked a few knickknacks to the floor. 

John shifted on his feet and gestured with one hand, “I recognised Miss Alder, so I merely asked around and found out where Miss Adler was staying. I assumed you were staying with her, you see – I tried to go up to the room personally, instead of acting like a silly child and throwing stones, but they wouldn’t let me up. However, I did trick them into telling me what room she was staying in, and so I—”

Sherlock pursed his lips and then rubbed at his face, “You can’t get up here at all?” he cut in, looking around and pushing back his hair. “Is there no way for you to clamber up here or…can you not sneak past those who are preventing you entrance?”

“I don’t need to now. You can just come down to me,” John frowned and licked his lips nervously. “I want to thank you for saving my life. I owe you so much – And I thought…maybe you’d like to stay with…me…instead?”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied a little too eagerly, causing John’s mouth to twist on a grin. “But, I can’t – Something has happened. My legs…they…”

John’s grin froze and then disappeared and he gazed at Sherlock with sudden concern, “What?” he asked, stepping closer to the building idly. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I need you to get me,” Sherlock told him without answering any of his questions, his tail flapping vainly against the floor with a muted thump. “You have to be quick, Irene is not here, which I’m sure you know, but she could be back at any moment.”

“You’re on first name basis with her?” John asked with what looked like disapproval and faint hilarity. “How exactly did you meet her, anyway? Do you even know who she is? Does she know what you are? – Christ, the amount of single, rich men who have dreamt of being in your place is monumental. You really have no idea how many would kill to be where you are, do you? Does she know your name? I don’t even know your name!”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and scrambled for the window with a growl, pushing it further open, “That can wait – I’ll tell you everything later. Right now, I need you to get me out of this room!” he said briskly, before he paused for a second and gave in with a soft sigh at John’s stubborn expression. “My name is Sherlock.”

“Sherlock?” He repeated with a twitching boyish smile that made Sherlock smirk down at him in return with flushed cheeks. “Figures it would be something fancy and unique like that.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock laughed deeply with another roll of his eyes. “Now, is there anything down there that you can use to get up here? It’s not that far – perhaps you can just climb? You’re a sailor. You should be used to climbing great heights, correct?”

“With ropes, yes,” John muttered, but he glanced around and then disappeared from view with a great sigh, mumbling to himself.

Sherlock drummed his fingers against the window ledge as he waited and glared, “We haven’t got all day! If Irene comes back and sees me—well, I’m not sure how she’ll take it, but if she takes it badly, then we’re going to have to—” cutting off Sherlock lifted his gaze, suddenly noticing Scuttle in the air. He watched the bird and then scanned for any sign of Ariel from his vantage point, before he tried to get Scuttle’s attention, failing to do so. “Stupid bird.”

“Takes it badly? Takes what badly? – What exactly is going on?” John replied, popping back into view with a furrowed brow. “Miss Alder’s already seen a lot of you, I imagine…”

“This is different,” Sherlock huffed and craned his head to try and follow John’s movements. “What are you doing? – Look, just climb up!”

“Sure, let down your hair, so that I may climb the dark and curly stair,” John retorted in a grumble and a half-hearted glower, eyeing the building. “I’m not sure I can get up it, Sherlock—”

“Nonsense!” Sherlock exclaimed, ignoring the happy shiver that went through him at hearing John say his name again. “Some of it is crumbled from the ocean wind – use your eyes, be a man, and come up here! I saved you, it’s time you repaid me in kind!”

John folded his arms with a frown, “You need saving? From what? A buxom woman?” he snorted, lifting his arms in defeat when Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “All right. Fine. Just…give me a moment.”

“We don’t have much time!” Sherlock said through his teeth, blinking when his tail twitched involuntarily. “Irene will…come…back…and…” He trailed off into silence and looked back from the window, gripping the windowsill when his tail twitched once more before his eyes. The scales seemed to throb and shift colour, and Sherlock gaped at them in confusion.

“Sherlock?” John asked, voice full of concern. “You okay?”

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply but the same tremendous pain from before abruptly shot through his body and made his breath hitch. Arching his back, Sherlock’s fell to the floor and hit his head, clawing and convulsing once more on the floor. The pain seemed ten times worse than it had been previously, being heightened by the rough burn of the carpet against his cheek and bare skin as Sherlock bucked. The world span when he was pulled close to unconsciousness again, but Sherlock fought it to hear John shout from the open window, appearing in it moments later.

“Sherlock!” John grunted, sounding out of breath as he inelegantly climbed into the room and rushed to Sherlock’s side, lifting him into his arms strongly. “Good God – Sherlock? Can you hear me? Are you all right? What’s happening?”

Unable to answer, Sherlock gripped at John’s clothed arms and listened to his own bones breaking and realigning. John was watching on in horror, his eyes wide and his face pale, but he didn’t let go of Sherlock and merely held him tighter when Sherlock unconsciously thrashed, and muffled his screams into his shoulder. The heat and scent of John invaded Sherlock’s senses in a rush, oddly calming the racing of his heart as his insides relocated once again, and Sherlock tried to press closer still into the circle of his arms. It felt unbelievably brilliant to be so close to John again, not that Sherlock would ever admit it, as he barely wanted to admit it to himself.

Once everything had died down, like it obviously had to, Sherlock sagged tiredly and closed his eyes, “God – are you all right?” John whispered in the silence that followed, and lifted Sherlock further against him. “Do you want some water?—”

“No!” Sherlock croaked brusquely in the folds of John’s collar. “No. No, water – Water is what did all this.”

“I…don’t follow?” John sighed and turned Sherlock’s head aside to check his eyes, pushing back his hair.

Sherlock gazed up at John in awe, feeling the same sort of thrill he had felt the first time they had met, “It seems,” he said after staring at John unblinkingly for a concerning amount of time, “that I cannot get wet.”

John’s mouth pinched, stifling an awkward grin, “Yes, right…I still don’t follow, I’m afraid.”

“If I get wet, mostly my legs it seems, then I revert back into a merman,” Sherlock explained with a sigh, unable to take his gaze away from John. He was fixated on the shape of John’s nose and jaw and ears, itching to touch. “There was a potion which I took to become human, and—”

“A potion?” John repeated with a frown that made Sherlock want to smooth the lines from his forehead. 

“John, I’m a merman. Doesn’t it stand to reason that magical potions exist if I do?” Sherlock asked with an arched eyebrow and a playful smile. “There is a lot you do not know. A lot concealed under the waves.”

“Yes, I gathered as much,” John huffed with a similar smile, running his eyes down Sherlock’s slumped form to examine his legs. “Sounds like an interesting place – Why did you want to be human so badly? Surely it’s more fascinating and freer, in the ocean? – I’ve always liked the sea…”

Sherlock’s smile shifted into a smirk, “Attracted to danger,” he murmured and waited for John to look back up to his face before he continued, “I’ve always felt the opposite – I’ve always liked the surface. It’s more interesting to me. There are so many things I want to see and do and know!”

John lifted his eyebrows and then regarded Sherlock’s legs again, “So…you can’t get them wet at all? That’s going to be a little difficult, isn’t it? Bit of a pain. Couldn’t you have had the legs without that annoying…side affect?”

“Truthfully, I didn’t know about it until recently…” Sherlock said and moved out of John’s arms to sit on the floor with him, touching and rubbing his human legs again, “The…way in which I got the potion was not exactly—”

“Ah,” John nodded as he adjusted his position, crossing his own legs, hands twitching near his knees. “I think I understand that. We have shady characters like that here on the surface to – Why did you take it if you knew that the person was, well, let’s say “a bit not good”?”

“I had no other choice,” Sherlock told him with an annoyed frown. “Not many have the power to grant such wishes. Most of them, if not all, are what we call sea witches. – The sea witch that is local to this area is just as “not good.” If I had gone to her, she would have asked for something in return; given me a deal that would have granted my wish, for some sort of price. – In fact, I am not the only one to have wished away my tail for legs this day. Another should be currently nearby. Possibly with Prince Eric, if all has gone to plan.”

John perked up in interest, “The Prince?”

“Yes. She’s in love with him, apparently,” Sherlock sneered, flapping a hand dismissively. “The night of the storm, after I had saved you, I helped her save him. He wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for us – She is besotted with him. Has been ever since she saw him on the ship. She was there when I was, though she was not seen…”

“Unlike you,” John grinned. “So, love at first sight, huh?”

Sherlock inclined his head, “Indeed. It’s pathetic and utterly preposterous. Am I right?”

“Um, sure, although I’ve heard of more ridiculous things,” John murmured and suddenly looked awkward, clearing his throat and looking away. Sherlock frowned at his expression but then was taken by the stubble lining his upper lip and jawline, and reached to touch it, much to John’s surprise. 

“You did that before too,” John said quietly once Sherlock removed his fingers. “Why? Do you not have facial hair in the sea? – Or body hair, for that matter? You don’t know how odd it is to see a man’s chest, underarms and, now legs, as smooth as yours.”

Sherlock suppressed the shudder at John’s touch as he ran a thick, callused finger up Sherlock’s calf, and licked his lips, “Chest and, um, underarm hair, no, we don’t have that. Facial hair, however, we do – It’s difficult to explain. It’s to do with status. A…symbol of maturity, masculinity and leadership, and can be used to attract the opposite sex if needs be. Mostly, however, it’s just redundant. A sort of secondary sex characteristic.”

“Aren’t you mature, then?” John joked and tapped his fingertips to Sherlock’s smooth face. “How old are you?”

“Shut up.” Sherlock scowled, turning his head away sullenly, which only made John laugh and pat Sherlock on the shoulder warmly.

“You’re like a new born baby,” John giggled, tilting his head, as he looked Sherlock over. “It’s odd – You don’t even have any hair at your…um…well, your genitals—not that I was looking, you understand! Well, obviously I was, but not in a strange way. I just…noticed it when you were…transforming and whatnot. – I have hair, you see, and a lot of other men do too. I wasn’t eagerly seeking that information out, of course! I’ve just been around a lot of men, and so sometimes seeing them nude is unavoidable. Plus, I was studying to be a doctor so I’ve seen my fair share of male genitals—God, I really should shut up…” 

Confused, Sherlock watched John as he stuttered, “My genitals?” he echoed, and spread his legs a little to eye the lump of flesh between them, noticing it was bigger than he remembered it being before at the beach. “You have hair there?”

John coughed nervously, “Yes – forget I brought it up—Shouldn’t we get you out of here before Miss Alder comes back?”

“The whole reason I needed to leave so quickly was because I thought I was a merman again,” Sherlock said, shaking his head in annoyance when John stared at him blankly. “And I’m not anymore.”

“Right. Yes. But, don’t you want to…stay with me? – You did say that you wanted to, didn’t you?” John asked, scratching the back of his neck apprehensively. “I mean, obviously you can change your mind. I’d probably pick a beautiful woman over me too, if I were you—”

Sherlock swatted at him, “No, you idiot. Of course I want to stay with you. However, Irene is bringing back clothing for me. Clothing I can now, once again, wear.”

“You’re using her for clothes?” John asked after a second, lifting one eyebrow at Sherlock. “Really?”

“Why not? She offered. She has the right influence to make the entire procedure quicker, why not let her do what she clearly enjoys doing?” Sherlock shrugged and smiled at John when he snorted in amusement and scratched at his stubbly cheek. Sherlock wriggled his toes in delight at the sound, unable to control himself, almost overwhelmingly happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Sherlock and John's dialogue is always so much fun!


	16. Discussions and plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any spelling mistakes and that can be blamed on the fact that I'm up at 3am

“I…I suppose I should go then,” John sighed after a few minutes of grinning at Sherlock, and moved to get to his feet until Sherlock grabbed him and yanked him powerfully back down. “What? I can’t stay! – Sherlock, I’ve all but broken into her hotel room! This is basically trespassing. I can’t be seen here.”

“She won’t mind,” Sherlock told him and snagged on John’s clothes, frowning when John fought the hold and pushed up to stand, leaving Sherlock fumbling to follow and grabbing John’s shoulders. “Don’t leave.”

“Sherlock, I can’t stay!” John insisted, sighing again when Sherlock tightened his hold and stepped up close with a taut expression of persistence. “What if she does mind? – I hardly think that Miss Alder will be fine having…another strange man in her room. Having you here is one thing, but—how did she even get you here? Weren’t you stopped at the door? I wouldn’t have thought they’d allow a half naked man into this posh place…”

Sherlock shrugged vaguely in answer and sought out John’s fretfully shifting eyes, “Stay. If it helps, I rather think she knew you’d turn up sooner or later anyway. She’s clever,” he said and quickly wrapped his arms around John’s neck when he noticed that John had lifted his hands to pry Sherlock off. “Furthermore, the whole reason she went to get me clothes was because—”

“Oh, no! That has nothing to do with me, so don’t even try it,” John interrupted, finally looking Sherlock in the face again. “She went to get you clothes because you need them, Sherlock. You can’t go around half naked all the time. Not without repercussions. It’s just not… dignified or…something – Speaking of your nudity, you’re very, very naked right now. Aren’t you cold for heavens sake?”

“No,” Sherlock replied and tilted his head, eyeing the line of John’s throat as he considered his overall temperature. His body was buzzing with a mixture of adrenaline and ecstasy, and a flush of colour was blooming up his neck and down his chest. “I feel lovely and warm, actually.”

John scoffed in disbelief but shook his head and lifted his hands with a smile, “Right, well, you…you should still put something on – Where is that…thing you were wearing before?”

“I ripped it,” Sherlock responded, nodding meaningfully at the damp and torn fabric on the floor, “And it’s still wet. I can’t wear it now. – John, I’m fine like this. Irene has seen my body before. I hardly see how it’s a problem. No one else can or will enter this room.”

John swallowed and glanced sheepishly to the door, “No one but for a selection of maids that clean each room at certain hours – God, that’d be an interesting situation…and by interesting I mean devastating. Hopefully Miss Alder comes back before then,” John said, and placed his hands on Sherlock’s forearms idly. “…Are you positive she’ll be okay with me being here?”

Sherlock blinked at him rapidly and loosened his arms, “Is it really so strange if they walk in to see me like this? Are they so unfamiliar to the human male form? Is everyone so deluded and supercilious around here?”

 

“Well,” John said, scratching the nape of his neck and briefly tangling their fingers together, before he pushed Sherlock back, “Yes. Sort of. – Don’t tell me there isn’t some of the same kind of…mer-people who are just as conceited where you come from?”

Sherlock thought of his brother and then rolled one of his shoulders in agreement, “All right, point taken.”

John nodded and huffed with a grin, “Anyway, think about it. I…I mean, first of all, the maids must know that Miss Alder is staying here, so seeing a nude man in place of a beautiful woman, would be a bit…traumatising – Not that you’re repulsive or anything like that! Just that, they aren’t accustomed to walking in to see such a…sight. And add me into the mix and, it’s…it’s a bit odd, isn’t it? Two men in a room together, with one of them nude for…no conceivable reason? In the room of a woman, and one that is as popular as Miss Alder? It’s…it’s just—Oh God. It’s actually pretty bad. – I really should go! I can’t even remember how I got up here to begin with… I heard you cry out and then I just…”

Sherlock jerked to attention and rushed after John as he made for the window abruptly, “No, no, no! Don’t go – John, what’s the point? We’ll only be seeing each other again anyway!” 

“Exactly! So, why don’t I go, you can get covered up with whatever Miss Alder has in store for you, and then we can meet up again after? I know where you are now,” John muttered in a rush, grabbing the window frame and then freezing when Sherlock latched onto him, embracing him tightly. “Sherlock, just…I’ll come back, all right?”

“I don’t understand why you can’t just stay,” Sherlock complained and hauled John from the window, winding his arms around John’s chest securely. “Irene will not mind that you are here. And if anyone else truly does indeed come before she arrives, we can just send them away. They won’t know anything amiss—”

“You being within a woman’s hotel room with another man will be something “amiss” which will be very hard to hide!” John argued, turning his head to glance at Sherlock, eyes focusing over his face but lingering on his mouth fleetingly. “What if we’re too slow to react? What if they just barge in here and see us? – I can just imagine the screaming now. A woman screaming isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s rather annoying…”

“Heard it many times before, have you?” Sherlock teased, and tucked his head in the crook of John’s neck stubbornly, “They might already know I am here anyway – I was brought in through this building, after all—And I’m certain Irene must have made sure that they would keep out while she was away. In fact, I’m positive she did so actually. She’s clever, remember?”

John looked back over to the window, and Sherlock felt his chest expand under his arms as he inhaled deeply, “How positive are you?”

“Quite positive,” Sherlock smirked and pushed his nose into the patch of skin behind John’s ear briefly, as if on instinct, mesmerised by the scent lingering there and the sight of John’s hairline. 

He thought back to the first time they’d met, feeling the ghosting of John’s hand on his face and recounting the look of entrancement in his eyes. Smirking wider, somehow high on the memory, Sherlock ignored the rational, stoic side of himself and closed his eyes on a deep and long inhale. He could almost blame it on the recent bump to his head, but Sherlock had felt the same pull the instant they had met. It was a silly notion, utterly ridiculous, though that didn’t seem to stop him from unconsciously sliding his face into John’s blonde hair.

John shifted in slight unease in response, “What—what are you doing?” he asked lowly, clearing his throat after Sherlock hummed in question. “Look, fine. I’ll stay, all right? – But I still think we should cover you up. Miss Alder may have seen you but, it’s…only…polite…and I don’t want her getting the wrong idea.”

Sherlock snorted in frustration but let John go and stepped back, smiling at him when John turned around with a blush on his cheeks, “Cover me with what, exactly?” he asked, sweeping out his arms to the room in inquiry, as John’s gaze jolted downward for a split second. 

Although the movement of his eyes was quick, Sherlock caught it and he narrowed his own eyes shrewdly, and then glanced down at himself. His genitals were flushed faintly with blood, and he wondered if it had happened when he’d been clinging to John, or possibly before that. His shaft had thickened very slightly also, and had enlarged into a meek curve that pulled the skin covering the end of it back an inch, exposing what it had once enclosed. Sherlock blinked and then frowned, reaching timidly toward it without thought.

“It’s okay! It’s, um, it’s natural. It happens to us all. Don’t worry. They have a mind of their own sometimes…” John told him in a stumble of words, and then bustled to one corner of the room, opening a door to pull a large sheet from within and then draping it quickly around Sherlock. “There! That’s…better…”

“Is it?” Sherlock asked with an arched eyebrow, suddenly aware of how the material shifted over his naked skin, hyperaware of the prickling heat under his skin. 

John exhaled a laugh and shrugged, and then led Sherlock back to sit onto a chair, “Well, it’s better than the alternative.”

“Very well,” Sherlock rumbled, touching himself discreetly under the sheet in intrigue. He wasn’t naïve enough not to know what had happened, or was happening, but he was still confused as to why. Sherlock glanced up at John from his seated position and John shot him an embarrassed smile.

“So, um, tell me more about this other…mer-person? – She really fell for the Prince after one look at him?” John asked and dragged the chair that Irene had sat upon close to sit down on himself. “Does she know it’s real love? Has she been in love before?”

Sherlock shrugged impassively, “I wouldn’t know – I’m guessing not though. Seeing as she spent a great deal of her time with a fish.”

“And spending time with you?” John asked, smirking when Sherlock glared. “What? I’m just saying that—”

“Ariel and I have only ever been associates – We explored sunken ships together. She was the only other individual that is as fascinated in human things as I am,” Sherlock explained, leaning back in the chair and looking down to his lap, still subtly mapping out the changes in his body with his fingers. “In all the time I’ve known her, she’s never once been interested in anyone. All she was interested in was human things, same as I.”

John seemed to quieten at Sherlock’s words, and Sherlock peeked up at him to find him softly frowning in thought, “Sherlock,” he said gently, leaning ever so slightly on the armrest of his chair, “Are you saying that you, and she, have never…”

Sherlock squinted sharply at him in response, “It’s like I just said. All we were interested in was human things.”

Backing off submissively, the smile that John flashed his way was tight and uncomfortable, “All right. Okay – So, this Ariel girl, she thinks she’s in love with the Prince, and so she…made some sort of crooked deal with a…sea witch… and now is in the same situation as you are?—Does the Prince know she’s a…a…”

“A mermaid? No – and her situation is not the same as mine. Quite the opposite,” Sherlock told him, tapping one of his feet. “I do not know of the deal between her and the sea witch, but there was one, without a doubt – I played with the idea that she hadn’t gone through with it, but knowing how stupidly smitten she is for this Prince…”

“You’re calling her stupid?” John scowled, rolling his eyes. “That’s rich, coming from you, I must say.”

Sherlock sat forward with a glower, “I did not do this for something as pathetic as love!”

John, seeming unaffected by Sherlock’s intimating expression, lifted his eyebrows, “No? Then what did you do this for then?” he asked, crossing his arms. “Because it seems to me, like you did do it for love.”

Sherlock’s heart skipped with the rolling of his stomach, and he blinked in quick succession, “What?” he scoffed with a cracking voice. “How do you figure that one out?”

“Your in love with the human world,” John told him, something that made Sherlock exhale shakily in vague relief. “It’s a different sort of love, sure, but it’s obviously just as strong. – You put yourself through agony to get here. Left your family and friends behind—”

“I don’t have friends,” Sherlock spat in a mope, and leaned back and away from John with a burning in his cheeks. His heart was racing and he clenched his hands into fists in annoyance.

John shook his head with a temperate laugh, “Yes, you do,” he said calmly, and grinned widely in the face of Sherlock’s glare. “We should help her.”

Sherlock jerked his head up in surprise, “What?” he exclaimed. “Why?”

“Why not?” John countered and scratched at his stubbly cheek. “She’ll be a lot like you, I imagine, so she’ll need all the help she can get – If she starts walking around half naked, all hell will break loose!”

Sherlock waved his hands, disrupting the sheet around him and exposing his entire torso to the room once more, “She has friends for that.”

“Yes, you,” John laughed, grin curling wider at Sherlock’s angered face. “Perhaps Miss Alder, could help too? Another woman would be just the job! It possibly needs a woman’s touch.”

“She has Flounder and Sebastian with her,” Sherlock told John curtly, before rethinking his words. “Well, Sebastian at the very least.”

John adjusted his seated position, crossing his legs and cradling his hands on his lap, and turned regarding Sherlock in curiosity, “Oh? More mer-people?”

“No, you idiot,” Sherlock sniffed, glancing at John’s booted feet in sudden interest. “Flounder is a fish, and Sebastian is a crab.” John went still in reaction and Sherlock smirked slowly, arrogantly up at him from under his fringe.

“A fish and a crab?” John repeated and then scowled. “And you think they can help her? – Come now, Sherlock!”

“Sebastian might be able to,” Sherlock shrugged and then wrinkled his nose. “I honestly don’t care whether she has help or not, John! I have my own issues to deal with now – Why would I do anything to aid her?”

“Because she’s your friend? Because you’re curious?” John suggested, tilting his head and then smiling brightly, “And because I’m asking you to – Either you help her, or I will, which might ultimately mean you help too, if you want to stay with me and everything…”

Grinding his teeth, Sherlock sulked, pursing his lips, “I don’t even know if she really is here, if she really did take the deal with the sea witch—”

“So we’ll find out,” John said stubbornly, leaning forward again to catch Sherlock’s eyes. “What you came here for can be seen and experienced at any time. What you want is to learn about the surface, right? To see everything you couldn’t have seen from the sea? – Look, your wish is basically already granted, but hers…hers is more difficult. All I’m saying is that we try. Ultimately, it’s up to her and him. You can’t force love. If it’s not to be, then she’ll find out, but she has to actually meet the Prince first to do that.”

“You’re too soft,” Sherlock told him, not as coldly as he had intended, and folded his arms. “You don’t even know her!”

John glanced skyward with a mutter and then reached out, curling his hand around the armrest of the chair Sherlock was sitting on, his knuckles brushing Sherlock’s elbow, “Sherlock,” he whispered sternly, his voice doing weird things to Sherlock’s heart rate, “Come on. I know you like her, you must do. You must want to help her, or to at least know that she’s here, that she’s safe? You’re not heartless…”

“Fine,” Sherlock growled, grabbing his hair in irritation. “Just stop talking – We’ll find out if she’s here. See what the contract was between her and the sea witch, make sure she’s on the right track towards the Prince, and then that’s it! Understand? After that, I want nothing else to do with her!”

John smiled a small but charming smile, nodding, “Sure, Sherlock. Whatever you say.”


	17. Bird Talk

After a short while Sherlock couldn’t bare John smiling at him any longer and pushed himself to his feet with a snarl and a hot flush. The sheet fell from his body in a flutter and John’s eyes flickered down briefly as he frowned in protest and sat up straighter in his chair. Overly aggravated with himself as well as John, Sherlock purposely kicked it aside and then left it in a crumpled heap, one half of it still on the chair and the other half on the floor. He stomped over to the window, pushing it open as far as it could go, and looked out. A cool, fresh breeze caressed the blush on his cheeks, and Sherlock rolled his eyes at the sensation and scrubbed at them in mortification. He searched the skies for Scuttle as he tried to ignore the feeling of John staring at his naked back, which only increased the thundering of his heart and the heat at his groin. What was wrong with him?

“Sherlock,” John sighed, and just by listening to the soft creaks from the chair and the rustle of the sheet, Sherlock knew that he’d gotten up, “I didn’t mean to annoy you, but if you think I’m going to believe that you don’t care, then you’ve got another thing coming—”

“You don’t even know me,” Sherlock said curtly and looked quickly over his shoulder with a somewhat meek flit of his eyes. “Not really…”

John’s frown deepened and he looked at the sheet in his hands, then nodded, “True,” he muttered, but smiled and walked over, draping the fabric back over Sherlock’s heated skin. “But I’m a pretty good judge of character – I mean, you did save me, that’s got to mean something, right?”

Sherlock made a sound in the back of his throat, not exactly disagreeing with him, and then turned to look back up at the sky, “It is a rarity amongst my people, I suppose,” he murmured, gripping the window frame tighter as John stepped up close to his side. “I know what you humans think about us, particularly the females, but it’s untrue. I’ve never heard or seen a mermaid purposely drown a human – It’s forbidden for us to even be at the surface. King’s law and all that…”

“King? You mean, King Triton?” John asked, suddenly immensely interested in their conversation. “He’s real? I mean…I…I know you’re a—but I never thought that Triton was real! – He’s meant to control the entire ocean! Even the weather!”

“I don’t see how,” Sherlock muttered in distaste, thinking of the merman, “All he does is sit upon his throne and yell at people, mostly his daughters – Ariel get’s the brunt of it however, as she’s the one whom—”

“Wait, what?” John exclaimed, turning Sherlock around by his shoulders to face him. “Ariel, this other one like you, is the daughter of King Triton? Ruler of the merfolk?”

“Yes,” Sherlock sighed, bunching his brows in confusion and cocking his head aside. “Did I fail to tell you that? I could have sworn I said that.”

John shook his head and then combed one hand through his hair, “No. No, you…you left that part out – God, so, she’s a Princess?” he giggled and then paused, his expression faltering. “Doesn’t this…complicate things?”

“How so?” Sherlock asked him, enjoying the touch of John’s other hand even through the material. 

“Didn’t you just say that it’s forbidden to go to the surface? That it’s one of Triton’s laws? – So, wouldn’t he be a bit…angry, if he found out that his daughter was gallivanting around on land? He could create a massive tidal wave and swallow this entire town!” John exclaimed, covering his mouth when his voice carried outside, catching the attention of a passer-by. Sherlock grinned faintly at John’s embarrassment and then patted John’s shoulder, letting it rest near his neck to feel John’s steady pulse. 

“He doesn’t know,” Sherlock told him, chuckling at John’s widening eyes. “What? You couldn’t possibly think that we’d tell him? – Half of the things we did were behind his back and this is no exception. And if anything, he pushed us to it. Especially Ariel.”

John dropped his head with a whine of anxiety, “Oh God, we’re all going to die…”

“Oh relax. He might have some terrible anger issues, but he’s not a killer – I very much doubt he’d slay any humans unless he had just cause to do so,” Sherlock said, unable to stop his fingertips from trailing the expanse of John’s throat, sliding them up and over his Adam’s apple. Sherlock glanced up at John when he swallowed roughly and took his hand away. “What now?”

“Nothing…just…life sure isn’t dull with you around,” John sighed and smiled at Sherlock for a moment, “Right, we should head straight over to the beach just as soon as Irene gets back with your clothes – We really need to find Ariel. I have a feeling that all of this can go very bad, very quickly, so we need to—”

Sherlock turned just in time to catch the wings of Scuttle as he circled above and shoved John down to the ground as he leaned out of the window, “Scuttle!” he shouted, not paying attention to how shocked John was as he gazed up at Sherlock from his place on the floor, hidden from sight. “Scuttle! Scuttle – you stupid bird, down here! Scuttle!”

“What are you doing—?” John asked, trying to get up, but was pushed back down with Sherlock’s knee. “Sherlock! – Why are you squawking like a seagull?”

“Stay down!” Sherlock hissed, still craning his head out of the window. “If he sees you, he might fly off – that’s if he comes down here at all—Scuttle!”

““Fly off?”” John repeated, looking more and more perplexed. “What?”

“Scuttle!” Sherlock shouted, waving an arm and then grinning widely when the bird finally noticed him and dived down to land on the window ledge, opening his beak to speak. “Before you start your inane babble – Yes, I’m human now, great deduction—I need to know if you’ve seen Ariel?”

Scuttle looked confused about everything for a second and then nodded, “Ya better believe I did! She’s got legs too,” he said, trying to bend his head to look down at Sherlock’s own, but Sherlock bullied him back with a glare. 

“Where is she?” Sherlock demanded, nudging John back down again when he shifted to his knees. “I assume she’s not still on the beach any longer?”

“The Prince took her back to his palace a while ago – All because of my superb dressing skills, I might add! – Hey, you’ve done a pretty great job yourself, there!” Scuttle said, motioning with his feathers to the sheet around Sherlock’s shoulders. “Could need a bit more work though…”

“She’s with the Prince already?” Sherlock frowned in a murmur and then shrugged. “Well, that’s good I suppose. Glad I don’t have to figure out a way to dump her off at his feet, at least – Do you know anything about her deal with the sea witch?”

Scuttle rubbed at the feathers of his neck in concentration, “She traded her voice, I think – Yeah!”

Sherlock rolled his eyes at Ariel’s foolishness, “Brilliant,” he huffed sarcastically, “Anything else?”

“Huh?” Scuttle replied, scratching at the feathers on his head until he puffed out his chest. “Oh! Yeah, she’s got three days to get the Prince to fall in love with her, and he’s gotta kiss her too.” 

“Three days? Three days starting from today? – This just keeps getting better and better,” Sherlock said sardonically, sighing and tapping his bottom lip, waving Scuttle away. “All right. Thank you.” 

“Do you gotta kiss someone?” Scuttle asked innocently, eyeing the room from his place on the ledge with a ruffle of his wings. “How did ya get in here anyhow? Did ya sneak in? – Wow…look at all that human stuff! You must be ecstatic to be there!”

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder at the room, suddenly aware with a surge of eagerness that his want for knowledge was back, “Yes,” he breathed with a smile, blinking and shaking his head, shooing Scuttle away. “Keep an eye on Ariel, if you can – And if you see Flounder or Sebastian, tell them that I wish to speak with them.”

“Sebastian is with Ariel,” Scuttle told him, still looking around, staring at an elegant comb from a nearby dressing table. “Hey, it’s a—!”

“All right, thank you, Scuttle,” Sherlock said brusquely, and pushed him back until he started flapping his wings, closing the window to end their conversation. “Stupid bird.”

John was gaping at Sherlock from the floor when he finally glanced back down at him, “You…were talking to a bird. To a seagull, no less.”

“Yes,” Sherlock frowned and gestured with a few fingers toward the window and the retreating figure of Scuttle. “You wanted to know about Ariel, didn’t you? Well, now we know – Although he’s a scattered brained bird, he was more or less telling me the truth, and according to him, her deal with the sea witch was a stupid one, just like I’d expected it to be.”

“You were talking to a bird…by squawking,” John intoned in shock, still not moving. “You sounded— God, that was bizarre. Can you talk to all animals? What in God’s name do you sound like when you talk to fish?”

“Oh, shut up! You’d be able to understand him too, if you only just listened!” Sherlock huffed, crossing his arms and then crouching down beside John to look him in the face properly. “Frankly, to me, it’s odd that you can’t speak to birds. You humans are all ignorant. Obviously.”

John blinked and then sighed, “All right. Fine. What was the deal then?” he asked, reaching over automatically to tug the sheet closed over Sherlock’s body, simultaneously pulling Sherlock closer to do so. 

“The price for legs, was her voice, which she willingly gave over like an idiot,” Sherlock said, cupping his hand over John’s to clasp it into his chest contentedly. “She has three days to get the Prince to fall in love with her and kiss her.”

“Otherwise…what?” John asked, seemingly happy enough to let Sherlock hold his hand. “Are there any repercussions if she fails to do so?”

Sherlock nodded, “Probably, but Scuttle wouldn’t know them. He’s an imbecile – To know more, it’s best if I were to find Flounder.”

“…The fish, right?” John snorted and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “Well, I suppose we can’t really ask Ariel if she has no voice, now can we? – So, the fish it is. How are we going to find him though? I can’t talk to fish and…you can’t get wet.”

“Well, I can, but it’s rather excruciating,” Sherlock said quietly, stroking John’s knuckles and then opening his hand to gaze at the calluses and lines on John’s palm and fingertips, tracing some of them with his thumbs. “Flounder will be nearby somewhere. He’s Ariel’s best friend, he doesn’t go anywhere without her, he’s constantly swimming around her – He’ll be waiting in the sea near the shore I’d wager, or he may possibly find some way closer…though he’s not the smartest fish in the sea, so I very much doubt it at the moment.”

“So…the kiss of true love then, hm?” John mumbled, watching Sherlock’s pale fingers move against his tanned skin with captivation. “That’s going to be difficult – if the Prince doesn’t love her, three days isn’t going to make much difference really. No matter what she does, if he doesn’t feel the same way…things don’t look too good—Perhaps I could talk to him and find out? – Actually, yes! I could probably get us into the Palace! It was because of Prince Eric that I was allowed the rest I needed when I was injured. He even let me stay in one of his guesthouses.”

Sherlock pulled a face in displeasure, “My, isn’t he just charming…” he muttered with aversion, cradling John’s hand to his chest again. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Why not now?” John said with a tut, glancing from their hands to Sherlock’s face. “After Miss Alder has come back, we will—”

As if saying her name had summoned her, Irene opened the door to the room and stepped inside, her arms full of folded clothes, “Ah! I thought so – John, was it?” she smiled, looking straight over at them both near the window without hesitation, her smile only widening when John scrambled to his feet with a blush, yanking his hand back. “Hello, again.”

“H-hello, Miss Alder,” John stammered as he adjusted his clothes and straightened his shoulders. “I…hope you don’t mind that I—”

“Nonsense,” Irene said dismissively, her eyes gleaming as she then motioned for Sherlock to come toward her. She seemed to be purposely ignoring the spilt water and torn fabric of what he’d worn before, but Sherlock couldn’t find it in himself to care that much as to why. “Come here please, Sherlock. – It took a lot of rather dull conversations, as well as a lot of coin, but I think I have the perfect outfit for you.” 

Sherlock got up and moved to her with a tilt of his head, staring at the neat pile of cloth in her possession, “Did you get the satin waistcoat you spoke about before?” he asked with a smirk in her direction, watching her put the clothes down on a small table so she had her hands free to pull the sheet from Sherlock’s body.

“Oh, my, is that for me?” She teased with a smooth and feminine chuckle when her eyes dropped to Sherlock’s genitals, her sudden improper grin enough to make John clear his throat and turn his back awkwardly to them with a hand to his mouth. “Hm. Or perhaps not? – What naughty boys you both are—”

“N-no!” John exclaimed, face red as he turned back around, shaking his head in vehement denial. “We didn’t do anything—you know that’s not right! That’s against…well…everything! Why-how could you even think that! I’m not like that!”

Irene and Sherlock seemed to instantaneously arch their eyebrows at John in perfect sync, “Calm, yourself, John,” she drawled as she rummaged in the pile of clothes and began to slowly help Sherlock dress. “It was merely a jest – Be careful however, you know what they say, doth protest too much…”

John glared at Irene’s impish expression, “Are you always like this?”

“Pretty much,” she nodded friendlily, smoothing down the shirt she had pulled across Sherlock’s chest. “Now, what were you two saying before I stepped into the room? Something you wanted to do today instead of tomorrow?”

“It’s nothing,” Sherlock told her curtly, staring at her until she looked away with a small sigh. He watched her silently as she worked on the buttons, and then glanced over at John. John was regarding her too, but looked away to smile at Sherlock, still blushing, and Sherlock returned it with one of his own feeling his heart race and only partly missing the knowing glint in Irene’s eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback fuels me!


End file.
